How people live in America who are serving a life sentence - ForumDaily
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How do people live in America who are serving a life sentence

Criminals who are serving life sentences spend tens of years in prison. They grow old and die behind bars. And, like many older people, suffer from age-related diseases. This creates huge problems for correctional institutions, who are not at all ready to care for the elderly.

Фото: Depositphotos

Walter Gregory went to prison for killing a girl friend. He vividly remembers how he beat her with his throw-out knife, and then carried the body into the garbage, writes Lenta.ru. “I also cut her eyes out,” Gregory shared with the New York Times correspondent. “I got caught when I came back to the room where I killed her and had sex with another,” he says.

This is one of the few memories he has left. Gregory spent more than a decade behind bars and lived to senile dementia. He does not know what happened to him yesterday, and does not fully understand what is happening around him. He needs constant care.

In the California men's colony lack such as he. Another elderly killer who once shot a drug dealer for fake cocaine, in his old age believed that from every reflection in the mirror his brother calls him. Another prisoner with dementia was waiting at the gate every morning for his mother to pick him up. He was so afraid to miss her, that he refused to wash.

Californian prison colony psychiatrist Cheryl Steed represented the prison contingent quite differently. “I expected that there would be a lot of frightening young men with muscles and tattoos,” she recalls. It turned out that there are many elderly prisoners in prison. Many are sixth, and even seventh ten.

10 percent of places in US correctional facilities are people who are serving life sentences. Another 11 percent are sentenced to imprisonment for more than 20 years. Many of them managed to grow old behind bars and, like many elderly people, cannot boast of good health.

"Sooner or later, many of them will find dementia," says Steed. Such a fate awaits former criminals more often than law-abiding citizens. Many of them drank, smoked and took drugs, suffered from diabetes and hypertension, got involved in fights and suffered head injuries. All this increases the risk of senile dementia. At the same time, according to the observations of specialists, Alzheimer's disease develops in prison two to three times faster than in the wild.

“Think for a second about what it is like to be in prison with dementia,” says Steed. - You do not even remember how and why you got there. When will they let you go home and will they let you go at all? ”

Three Errors

Lifetime is not only the cruel killers like Walter Gregory. In 2013, photographer Andrew Burton met with 82-year-old prisoner Californian male colony Anthony Alvarez. “He was sentenced to imprisonment from 62 years to life, and by that time he had served 42 of the year,” recalls Burton. “He did not kill or rape anyone.” He was put under the law of three mistakes. ”

Alvarez was not an angel: he committed several thefts and escaped from the county jail. In addition, they found an illegal pistol in him, which, however, lay idle. “I have never shot anyone,” he says. - There were chances. But I could not.

In and of itself, none of these acts deserved severe punishment. However, in many US states, criminals who have been caught for the third time are given long sentences, even for minor offenses. Alvarez violated the law three times, and they put him behind bars forever.

All this - the consequences of toughening punishments, which since 1960's insisted on conservative politicians. On their initiative, they banned or severely cut off the possibilities for early release (truth in sentencing), began to harshly punish certain crimes, not taking into account mitigating circumstances (zero tolerance), in some cases - severely persecute even drinking alcohol in a public place, street trade without permission and similar offenses.

Фото: Depositphotos

Primarily, the poorest Americans and racial minorities suffered from such measures. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), blacks in 20 were sentenced to life imprisonment for non-violent crimes without the right to pardon more often.

If you hand out life sentences to the right and left, in a couple of decades the prisons will be filled with old men. Already by 2013, every sixth American prisoner was over 50 years old. It was about hundreds of thousands of people, and their number is growing rapidly.

American correctional facilities are more and more like nursing homes and are completely unprepared for this. Prison hospitals, as a rule, are not designed to care for patients with chronic diseases. Chambers and sanitary facilities are not suitable for older people who move on crutches or in wheelchairs, and prison staff are poorly trained and do not know what to do with such prisoners.

Despite the lack of proper care and treatment, the care of the elderly still flies to the prisons a pretty penny. Each of them has to spend on average about 70 thousand dollars a year. Young prisoners are half the cost, but they are getting smaller.

Golden robes

Thirty years ago, Cecel Montgomery slaughtered his daughter-in-law, who refused to lend him money for drinking. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he did not calm down behind bars. He secretly brewed a jail in the cell, used drugs sent from the will, often fought and threatened prison staff.

“I was a monster,” he now believes. His views on life began to change when he enrolled in a program to help prisoners who suffer from senile dementia, and began to care for sick neighbors, in effect, replacing them with orderlies and nurses. For the yellow uniform of the participants of the program are called "golden robes".

All Montgomery colleagues in the "golden robes" sit for the killings. The oldest participant in the program finished off his victim with a hammer. Another killed a relative and attempted to wife. The third shot a fellow traveler who tried to steal his car. Before prison, they were not inclined to sympathize with strangers and did not differ in altruism.

Now they do not recognize. They rise daily before everyone else to help their wards get up and dress. “Golden robes” lead elderly prisoners to the bathroom and dining room, help them in various matters and do not give them offense. If someone is incontinent, then cleaning, washing and changing clothes are also on them.

This is an exhausting, dirty and ungrateful job. “They don’t even thank you,” explains one of the voluntary orderlies. “Sometimes they pat their shoulders like this, and I understand what that means.”

For their work, “golden robes” receive 36 dollars per month and suffer the attacks of other prisoners who consider them informers and minions of the prison administration.

“How to explain that a person who once took away life cares for the sick, a person who caused terrible pain, devotes himself to alleviate it? What is the real side of his personality? - asks Cheryl Steed, who heads the program in the California men's colony. “I think there was always a grain of something good in them that no one ever cared about.” And we took care.

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