This Article analyzes the growing population of elderly prisoners and the practical and policy challenges that one must understand to impact meaningful change for this population. The rise in the elderly inmate population creates new burdens on the prison system. Prisons struggle to provide adequate healthcare, compensate for mental health issues like dementia, and simply to maintain orderly prison programs when many inmates struggle to hear, see, or walk long distances. This Article argues that prisoners are entitled to reasonable accommodations under both constitutional and American Disabilities Act provisions. Additionally, this Article points to federal policy initiatives like the compassionate release program and argues that these initiatives create substantial hurdles, therefore making it unlikely that the elderly prison population will diminish in the future.
This Article ultimately calls for practical, low-cost remedies that can be established within prisons to manage the growing number of elderly prisoners. Essentially, this Article recognizes that prison systems are created for younger inmates, with inadequate training, planning, and implementation of elderly assistance initiatives. In response, this Article takes a practical stance in asserting that resources spent on implementing programs within the prisons, to include specialized housing, telemedicine, adequate staff training, and promotion of inmate assistant programs, will have a greater effect on surging numbers of elderly inmates than compassionate release.