Hardly anyone – except murderers – dies of old age in prison. Most sentences are in the nature of ten years or so. Even long term sentences usually are geared to the convict staying in prison only until he’s too old and feeble to re-offend.

Further, because prisons want to save on their health costs – even though prison medical care is already notorious low quality – they have a practice of releasing prisoners whose health problems have made them too feeble to be much of a threat to society. Once releases, his medical treatment (if any) is funded by something other than the prison budget. THe result is that most prisoners, even if their crimes were serious, becomes “civilians” in time for their deaths not to be counted as prison deaths.

LOL!

My Aunt is a prison Nurse. She is highly qualified and has worked for the prisons since the late 80″s. She said the biggest problem is getting the *house* Doctor(usually a retired physcian who dosen’t give a crap) to refer sick patients/prisoners to qualified Doctors for care. And she said good Nurses burn out quickly, mainly because of the stress(from the prison staff, not the inmates). She has lasted 20 years because she says she has put up with my Uncle for 35 years, prison guards and criminals are a snap.

Interesting stat but it seems to me to be a FYI bit of info..

I’m pretty sure noone is trying to do life in jail.. to live longer

Often when lifer inmates are too old to care of themselves, they are released to hospice care, thereby reducing the number of deaths. If an inmate is terminal, they are more likely to receive parole then if they weren’t. Both these measures reduce the natural statistics and shift the numbers from the one column to another.

A greater question would be why are only 89% of inmates get diagnostic work? When they claim that 93% received medical treatment, what is the quality of that treatment? Does handing out an aspirin count as treatment in this study?

Many states have sold the medical care contracts to the lowest bidders. In turn, they use unqualified people and those who can’t get jobs elsewhere to do the work. California has even gone under Federal Court control because the medical system is so abhorrent.

Being in jail is no picnic. It is an abusive jungle where no one cares. Yet those on the outside will still suggest crap like this article.