Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The Bottom of the Iceberg

Hitting new highs nationally for Alzheimer's sufferers, and the growth's just starting. My wife's grandmother and mother both died from the disease, her mother diagnosed at 56. It's something that no one and no family should ever have to go through. That's not corrections sentencing, though, is it? This is. Prisons and jails are increasingly responsible for these folks, the fastest growing age group, more and more over time. This is just part of the giant iceberg that I keep harping on that we only see the tip of and only now begin to understand. The costs of aging offenders will be the topic du decades, and we’re just being silly right now to ignore it when we still might have time to plan. In OK a new prison just for disabled inmates, mainly the aging, opened a month ago and is already 3/4ths full. Notice how I haven't mentioned how these folks cost on average 2-3 times what the non-aging inmate does. IOW, it's like having 3 prisoners instead of 1. Tripling costs when we're choking already. Good plan.

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