Longer Prison Terms Mean More Seniors Behind Bars
23 April 2012
Prisoners at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama, return to their cells
FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. Last week on our program we talked about community policing. We looked at some of the thinking behind modern methods of law enforcement. Today we move from crime to punishment. We talk about the issue of older prisoners. Recently a human rights group expressed concerns about meeting their needs behind bars.
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FAITH LAPIDUS: In nineteen forty-six, William George Heirens was charged with murder and attempted murder. He was eighteen years old. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in state prison in Illinois.
William Heirens has spent sixty-six years behind bars. Yet even at the age of eighty-four he is not the nation's oldest prisoner. The federal Bureau of Prisons says one of its prisoners is ninety-five.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Older prisoners are a growing group in the United States, and not because of a crime wave by senior citizens. In fact, crime rates nationwide have been dropping for some time. The main reason there are more older prisoners is because more people serving long sentences are getting older just like other Americans.
The nineteen eighties and nineties brought a number of new programs, policies and laws to fight crime -- like the war on drugs. In many cases these new policies meant longer prison sentences. They also meant fewer chances for prisoners to gain early release on parole. At the same time, more people were receiving life sentences without even a chance for parole.
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