More on the (medical) costs of long sentences

As detailed in this post, last month the Tuscon Citizen ran this thoughtful article about Arizona’s aging prison population and the associated rising health-care costs.  This morning the Los Angeles Times examines this issue in this cover story entitled, “Dying on our dime: California’s prisons are teeming with older inmates who run up staggering medical costs.”

The LA Times article details that the “financial toll of incarcerating senior citizens nationwide is staggering,” that “California spends two to three times more a year housing inmates over the age of 55,” and that a “state Legislative Analysts Office study projects that the number of inmates over 60 could hit 30,200 by 2022, costing the state at least a billion dollars a year.” The article then astutely spotlights that “sentencing reform is the primary culprit. The state’s 1994 three-strikes law mandates life sentences without parole for certain repeat felons, and these recidivists — 42,240 second- and third-strikers as of June 2002 — will inevitably grow old and die in prison.”

In addition to its effective coverage of this important issue, the LA Times article also has this compelling photo gallery of elderly inmates.