Bearing the High Costs of Hospice Behind Bars. Oliver Prichard.
by Prichard, Oliver; ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Series: SIRS Enduring Issues 2005Article 48Family. Publisher: Philadelphia Inquirer, 2004ISSN: 1522-3213;.Subject(s): Hospice care | Older prisoners | Prisoners -- Health and hygiene | Prisoners -- Medical care | Prisons -- Cost of operation | Prisons -- Economic aspectsDDC classification: 050 Summary: "At Laurel Highlands state prison, inmates wait quietly on the other Death Row. Under harsh light in freshly disinfected wards, withered men lie tethered to machines, drifting in and out of sleep, or slump in wheelchairs and mutter through a haze of dementia....Since its conversion from a mental hospital in 1996, this minimum-security prison about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh has become the repository for more than 600 of the state's geriatric, chronically ill and dying male inmates. In essence, it is a nursing home behind bars, where a prisoner's annual keep can top $70,000, about triple the usual cost of incarceration." (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) This article reveals that "geriatric inmates have become the fastest-growing segment of the prison population nationally" and reports that several cash-strapped states have "begun questioning the practicality of spending so much tax money to incarcerate convicts often too feeble to even stand."| Item type | Current location | Call number | Status | Date due |
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High School - old - to delete | REF SIRS 2005 Family Article 48 (Browse shelf) | Available |
Articles Contained in SIRS Enduring Issues 2005.
Originally Published: Bearing the High Costs of Hospice Behind Bars, Feb. 29, 2004; pp. B1+.
"At Laurel Highlands state prison, inmates wait quietly on the other Death Row. Under harsh light in freshly disinfected wards, withered men lie tethered to machines, drifting in and out of sleep, or slump in wheelchairs and mutter through a haze of dementia....Since its conversion from a mental hospital in 1996, this minimum-security prison about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh has become the repository for more than 600 of the state's geriatric, chronically ill and dying male inmates. In essence, it is a nursing home behind bars, where a prisoner's annual keep can top $70,000, about triple the usual cost of incarceration." (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) This article reveals that "geriatric inmates have become the fastest-growing segment of the prison population nationally" and reports that several cash-strapped states have "begun questioning the practicality of spending so much tax money to incarcerate convicts often too feeble to even stand."
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