Prison Fellowship explores how U.S. prisons provide hospice services for terminally ill men and women. “I listen to people’s regrets, their stories, their happiness, their joy. I listen to their confessions.”
One of the consequences of over two decades of “tough on crime” legislation has been the steady increase in elderly residents in our nation’s jails and prisons. A 2015 Human Rights Watch report notes that the number of prisoners above the age of 55 has increased threefold in less than a decade, and that many of those men and women will remain incarcerated well into their 70s and 80s—if they leave prison at all.
To get off to a healthy start upon release, ex-prisoners need to have access to medical care. For many, incarceration was their first chance at receiving regular medical care, though the quality of care was usually minimal and inconsistent.