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| Graying Inmates in Alabama Prison |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/15/2001 |
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The barbed-wire fences and guard tower make the Hamilton Correctional Facility look like any other prison, but the first thing visitors notice is hardened criminals wearing diapers or sitting in wheelchairs. This is Alabama's prison for the aged and infirm, where 300 inmates awaiting death behind bars are a testament to the state's get-tough-on-crime era, when the number of life-without-parole sentences began to rise. Those who run the prison believe it may provide a glimpse into the nation's future. 'If you keep people in prison long enough, the population of older prisoners is going to grow,' said warden Billy Owen, who predicts there could be a need for several similar state prisons in the near future. When the Hamilton Correctional Facility first opened here 22 years ago, it was one of the first in the country to specifically house geriatric and infirm inmates. Now several states have similar prisons, while others have special units for sick and elderly inmates inside regular prisons, said Joann Morton, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina. 'What to do with these inmates is rapidly becoming a national problem,' said Morton. 'As the population ages, so does the population of prisons,' she said. Last year, about 103,000 prisoners nationwide were above the age of 50, which is about 8.6 percent of the overall prison population, according to the Criminal Justice Institute. 'He has a brother who is willing to take care of him,' said Cpl. Jay Boyett, a correctional officer at Hamilton since the facility opened 22 years ago. 'He can't harm anybody.' Bob Sigler, a criminal justice expert at the University of Alabama, said the state's prisons may be filled with inmates like that by the year 2020, partly because of a law passed in 1979 that mandated life sentences for four-time felons. 'Our problem is that the habitual offender statutes caused large numbers of relatively mild offenders to be put in prison for the rest of their lives,' he said. 'All of those people are going to grow old and die in prison.' Gov. Don Siegelman signed a bill into law last week that will allow the release of some nonviolent offenders sentenced as habitual offenders once a plan is developed for its implementation. Alabama's jail system is already among the nation's most crowded. |
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