The Problem with Geriatric Prisoners

An article in Mother Jones -- an unabashedly liberal magazine -- discusses the extraordinary expense and lack of compassion in keeping very elderly criminals in prison. The  elderly can have extraordinarily high medical and maintenance costs and the risk that they will be future offenders is slight.

Nonetheless, releasing the elderly early contravenes the punitive purpose of prison and the idea that criminals who are sentenced to "life" will, indeed, spend their lives in prison. It is difficult for liberals to advocate early release when they also oppose the death penalty dangling "life in prison" as an alternative.

The punitive/retributive purposes of imprisonment (and I have a hard time separately those concepts once imprisonment has begun) are the only purposes left for imprisoning the elderly -- imprisonment's rehabilitative and warehousing goals have become pointless. Given the extraordinary costs the incipient question is how much are punitive/retributive goals worth to us, because at this stage they cost a ton.

There's a point where we're punishing ourselves more than the criminals. Via boing boing.