Are Geriatric Jailbirds Getting Better Health Care Than Mom?
You know the case. Forty-one years after the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, former preacher and Klan Kleagle Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three twenty-year prison terms. Finally, the victims and their families received a measure of long-overdue justice. Killen should have been convicted at the original trial in 1967. But that begs the question: while vindication and punishment are vital, who is really bearing the brunt of keeping the now 82-year-old Killen frail, evil, balding and with little to no use of his right hand in prison? The answer, dear readers: we are. In 2002, America`s prison population topped 2 million, according to a report from the Justice Department`s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical center projected that one third of the U.S. prison population will be geriatric (people over 65) by 2030. Part of the jump is the result of aging baby boomers. The increasing numbers of
