[NYAPRS Enews] AP: NYS Creates Nursing Home-Like Cells for Aging Mentally Disabled Prisoners

[Harvey Rosenthal]

A Prison Like No Other 

Fishkill Creates Therapeutic Center To Care For Inmates With
Aging-Related Mental Issues  

by MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press   May 29, 2007 

 

FISHKILL -- Past a metal gate, near a board listing names and inmate
numbers, white-haired men in robes watch "The Price is Right" in the day
room. Out on the balcony, another patient looks through the bars as he
fidgets from side to side.

 

Units catering to patients with dementia-related conditions like
Alzheimer's disease are common. But they're not like the one here in
Fishkill state prison.

 

In years past, men here were convicted of crimes like murder, robbery
and rape. Now they are the first group of patients in Fishkill's "unit
for cognitively impaired inmates," a therapeutic center created by New
York prison officials faced with an aging inmate population.

 

"Some of them don't even remember their crimes," said Dr. Edward
Sottile, medical director for the Hudson Valley prison.

 

The unit -- 30 beds on the third floor of the prison's medical center --
is a first for New York and possibly the nation, through experts say it
likely won't be the last as more people grow old behind bars.

 

The average age of New York's prisoners is climbing. Inmates 50 and over
accounted for 3 percent of the prison population two decades ago,
compared to 11 percent last year.

 

Like society as a whole, inmates are getting older as health care
improves and baby boomers hit retirement age. But researchers also note
that inmates are staying behind bars longer thanks to "three strikes"
and other tough-on-crime laws. Nationwide, the number of prisoners over
age 50 in state and federal prisons is rising at about 8 percent a year,
said sociologist Ronald Aday, author of "Aging Prisoners: Crisis in
American Corrections."

 

"This group is going to mirror what's going on in our nursing homes. You
have the terminally ill, you have people who have strokes in this
population, you have people who have dementia," said Aday, of Middle
Tennessee State University.

 

Fishkill is a 1,700-inmate, medium-security prison some 70 miles north
of New York City that serves as a regional medical hub for the system.
Inmates can get everything from throat cultures to long-term nursing
care at the modern medical center built inside the prison's perimeter.

 

The unit opened in October on the center's third floor and is still
getting up to speed. Twenty inmates from prisons around the state --
Attica, Midstate, Coxsackie, Orleans -- are now patients.

 

But for the prison bars, the unit has the clean-white-wall feel of a
nursing home. A marker board in the day room includes a picture of a sun
with a smiley face and a reminder to "Have a great day." The activity
calendar lists puppies on Thursday and bingo on Friday. As long as they
behave, patients can wander from their rooms to the day room.

 

"They're still in prison," said Fishkill superintendent William
Connolly. "This is just a unique environment within a prison
environment." 

 

 

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