Aging in Prison: Special Series
Prison makes an awful elderly care facility, yet more prisons are rapidly becoming just that.
Thanks in large part to longer prison sentences and decreasing rates of parole, the number of incarcerated people 55 and older has climbed from 48,000 to 154,000 over the last two decades.
In 2019, this age cohort made up 63% of state prison deaths for the first time since figures were tracked, according to the most recent data available.
Prison Journalism Project’s special project on America’s graying prison system is a collection of stories from incarcerated writers that chronicle different facets of growing old behind bars.
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