Law Commons^™

You Can't Get There From Here: Elderly Prisoners, Prison Downsizing, And The Insufficiency Of Cost Cutting Advocacy, Elizabeth Rapaport

Faculty Scholarship

The prison population in the United States has peaked and begun to recede, reversing more than 30 years of growth. Mass incarceration is yielding to the imperative to reduce state budgets in recessionary times. As states turn away from the extravagant use of prison for nonviolent offenders, the percentage of the prison population serving long and life sentences for violent felonies will increase. By 2009 one in eleven prisoners were lifers. These are the prisoners growing old and dying in prison. High cost elderly prisoners who have aged out of crime should be good candidates for cost saving measures such …