Associated Press
HAMILTON, Ala. – The barbed-wire fences and guard tower make the Hamilton Correctional Facility look like any other prison, but the first thing visitors notice is hardened criminals wearing diapers or sitting in wheelchairs.
This is Alabama’s prison for the aged and infirm, where 300 inmates awaiting death behind bars are a testament to the state’s get-tough-on-crime era, when the number of life-without-parole sentences began to rise.
“If you keep people in prison long enough, the population of older prisoners is going to grow,” said warden Billy Owen, who predicts there could be a need for several similar state prisons in the near future.
When the Hamilton Correctional Facility first opened here 22 years ago, it was one of the first in the country to specifically house geriatric and infirm inmates.
Now, several states have similar prisons, while others have special units for sick and elderly inmates inside regular prisons, said Joann Morton, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina.
“What to do with these inmates is rapidly becoming a national problem,” Morton said. “As the population ages, so does the population of prisons,” she said.
Last year, about 103,000 prisoners nationwide were above the age of 50, which is about 8.6 percent of the overall prison population, according to the Criminal Justice Institute.
Even for the correctional officers, the days can sometimes be long.
“This is laid back. It’s really like a nursing home,” says Dwight Hayes, a veteran officer at Hamilton.
“At other prisons, you have inmates who come in fighting and go out fighting. Here the days are boring. But in this business, a boring day is a wonderful day because nothing happens.”
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