Prison workers, including health care professionals, chaplains, prison society volunteers and corrections officers, will provide information on current limitations, strengths, existing perceptions of end-of-life care among prison stakeholders and areas of care that bear improvement. Using the data collected, researchers will create a set of educational strategies for use by prison staff that they can tailor to fit individual prison's needs.Researchers selected Pennsylvania prisons that represent the diversity of those nationwide. They include varying levels of racial/ethnic concentrations and range from minimum- to maximum-security facilities. Included are prisons for male and female inmates. The study also includes a prison with an oncology unit, a prison that holds a primarily geriatric population, two prisons that house inmates facing death penalties and a prison that has a mental health unit.
New York state and many other states allow for compassionate release of terminally ill prisoners, reports the New York Times. However, few prisoners are actually released under these types of laws.
The embrace of compassionate release comes as the nation’s prison population is at a historic high — 1.6 million people as of 2008, according to the Justice Department — compounded by a surge in aging and sick inmates serving longer sentences. In 2008, there were 74,100 inmates age 55 and older, a 79 percent increase from 1999. New York estimates the cost of caring for a gravely ill inmate at $150,809 a year.
Once released, they are usually cared for by family members or placed in nursing homes or hospices, their expenses largely covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
But while the new state guidelines led to a rise in applications for medical parole — 202 inmates last year, compared with 66 in 2008 — they have hardly led to more releases.
