Scenes of Prison
Addendum:
61. The Oldest One Percent
I first met Oscar when he was led into the Disciplinary Segregation Unit in handcuffs slowly shuffling along with a security officer close at his heels. Oscar was old, very old. I guessed he was in his mid-eighties, and I soon learned he was deaf as a post.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“What’s that?” he shouted through the closed door of his Segregation room.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
A blank stare was his only reply. Honestly, he didn't know why they had brought him to Segregation. He also didn’t know why he was in prison. Those memories had left him long ago.
Oscar had not been in his room very long before he began pounding on his door. He was frustrated that his door knob wouldn't turn and his door wouldn’t open when he tried to turn the knob. Very soon, angry shouts, name-calling, and curses flowed from behind his closed door. He had questions, and he demanded answers from us, and when we answered his questions, he couldn’t hear or understand what we said. Oscar was one confused, angry old man.
We managed with difficulty and counted the days until Oscar would go to court.
When the day finally arrived, Oscar went to the Disciplinary Committee hearing, and the hearing officer imposed a sentence of segregated confinement that matched the number of days he had already served, so as soon as the hearing ended, it was time for Oscar to leave. However, Oscar’s departure from our Segregation Unit would have to be different from other inmates. Oscar would get lost if we handed him his property and told him to return to his original unit. He had no idea where it was or how to get there. Oscar would have to be escorted to his original unit, and the task was assigned to me. I would lead the way.
I contacted D-Unit staff and told them we would soon be on our way. Oscar changed out of his orange jumpsuit and into his normal khaki prison clothing. He gathered the little property that he had, and we set out for D Unit, the unit from which he had come.
When we arrived at D Unit, we were expected. Oscar’s room was ready for him, and a younger inmate met us at the door and took charge of Oscar, leading him away into the Unit and to his old room. That was a surprise for me.
Who was this young inmate, and why would he have responsibility for Oscar? Oscar seemed to know him, and he followed him without complaint or hesitation. He was comfortable with this younger inmate. How could that be? When I asked, the staff on D Unit sat me down and explained it to me.
Inmates with life sentences and inmates with very long sentences, which can never be completed, will remain on maximum custody for the rest of their lives. Because of this custody level, they’ll also be limited in their housing. They will have to live in a maximum custody prison for the rest of their lives and they will die of old age in this prison unless something else kills them first.
Oscar was an example of this. He would never leave our prison. He would die here.
What crime had brought him to prison? What had he done to deserve such a long period of incarceration? Oscar couldn’t say. He didn’t remember. Did he have any family or contacts on the outside? None that were still alive.
Oscar was alone in the world, and his advancing dementia and deafness accelerated his isolation. He could not find the Dining Hall. If he went to the exercise yard, he could not find his way back to his room, and Oscar was not unique.
Inmates with forever sentences, who must remain in a maximum custody prison until they die, pose special challenges in a prison system. When they become very elderly, they are vulnerable to predation by other inmates. They can’t clean their own rooms or bathe without assistance. They don’t know when to take their medication or how to gather their dirty clothing to send to the laundry. There are only a few of them at any one time, 1% by my count, but they need help.
At the Lincoln Correctional Center, we designated a section of one housing unit for inmates like Oscar. Nearby, we housed younger inmates who were hired to help them, and we assigned one inmate for each elderly, needy inmate. The inmate who met us at the door when I returned Oscar to his unit was named Ralph. He had been assigned to Oscar, and the job he filled carried the title of health aide.
Health aides are a daily presence for these elderly inmates, and they establish a routine with their charges which meets the elderly inmate’s immediate needs. This provides a structure to their days. It’s a routine that confused, elderly inmates like Oscar find comforting.
The health aide position is the highest paying inmate job we offer at the prison. Therefore, it is highly sought after, and we can count on health aides to do a good job. It’s a job they want to keep.
I transferred to D Pod shortly after my experience with Oscar. When I got there, I found two more elderly inmates like Oscar and two more younger inmates like Ralph who served as their health aides. I had two years to watch the health aide program work on a daily basis. It was long enough to be impressed.
Here we have younger inmates caring for and caring about older, vulnerable inmates. In the past, these helping inmates who are now health aides, would have been more likely to rob or assault these vulnerable, elderly inmates. Now, they served as their caretakers. It was good for the health aides, and it was good for the elderly inmates who received this care.
I also worked there long enough to notice ways to improve the program, so I have a couple of suggestions. The first involves custody.
One factor in determining an inmate's custody is the inmate's likelihood of escaping. If Oscar tried to escape from LCC, he would meet a 10-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and covered with Concertina razor wire. He would also find a tower officer shooting at him. For Oscar, a 4-foot chain-link fence with nothing on the top would prevent him from getting to the other side. No barbed wire, Concertina razor wire, or tower officers with rifles would be needed.
Another factor in determining an inmate’s custody level is the likelihood that an inmate will become violent and harm others. If Oscar became violent and tried to harm someone else, it would probably kill him. If that didn’t do it, the person he attacked would likely hit him back, and that would probably kill him, too.
The Oscars in our prisons don’t need to be given a maximum custody status, but they don’t qualify for a minimum or community custody level. If we created a custody level especially for elderly inmates like Oscar that allowed them to live in other settings besides a maximum security prison, then we would have the flexibility to try other living arrangements, which brings me to my second suggestion to improve the program.
Move our elderly inmates out of maximum security prisons.
As the inmate population ages, the number of elderly inmates like Oscar will increase. They do not need to occupy maximum security cells. We could build housing for these inmates next to community corrections facilities and encircle them with a chain-link fence. Some of the inmates living in the community corrections facility could be hired as health aides to provide care for these elderly inmates. This would give employment to these inmates and provide them with training and experience that could help them secure employment in care centers in the community when they have completed their prison sentences and have been released.
Finally, the proximity of these living quarters to the community corrections center would enable these elderly inmates to have access to medical and food service from the community correction center. The security for the community corrections center could also provide security for the living quarters of these elderly inmates.
Is there a better way to provide care for our very elderly inmates who must remain in prison until they die? These are a few of my ideas, but anyone working in the program could undoubtedly offer more ideas that might have merit and should be considered.
Discussion
- Have you had experience working with very elderly people?
- Do you have ideas about providing care for very elderly inmates in a prison system?
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