Life, With Dementia: Convicted Killers Caring For Other Inmates
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Secel Montgomery Sr. stabbed a woman in the stomach, chest and throat so fiercely that he lost count of the wounds he inflicted. In the nearly 25 years he has been serving a life sentence, he has gotten into fights, threatened a prison official and been caught with marijuana.
Despite that, he has recently been entrusted with an extraordinary responsibility. He and other convicted killers at the California Men’s Colony help care for prisoners with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, assisting ailing inmates with the most intimate tasks: showering, shaving, applying deodorant, even changing adult diapers.
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Dementia in prison is an underreported but fast-growing phenomenon, one that many prisons are desperately unprepared to handle. It is an unforeseen consequence of get-tough-on-crime policies — long sentences that have created a large population of aging prisoners. About 10 percent of the 1.6 million inmates in America’s prisons are serving life sentences; another 11 percent are serving over 20 years.
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With many prisons already overcrowded and understaffed, inmates with dementia present an especially difficult challenge. They are expensive — medical costs for older inmates range from three to nine times as much as those for younger inmates. They must be protected from predatory prisoners. And because dementia makes them paranoid or confused, feelings exacerbated by the confines of prison, some attack staff members or other inmates, or unwittingly provoke fights by wandering into someone else’s cell.
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(see link in post #2)
A long, but fascinating read.
It does some good both for the afflicted and for the caregivers. Those who were convicted of heinous crimes may regain some humanity.
= new reply since forum marked as read
availability of assisted care facilities are limited, and expensive. While "compassionate release" paroles for older inmates are on the increase in CA, those with severe medical disabilities simply may not make it on the outside.
Inmates with "good" track records have long been working as orderlies at CMC under the supervision of professional medical staff. And, as an aside, the medical staff truly works to provide the best possible care they can within the system. It's often a difficult balance they work to maintain - seeing the patient as a patient, not the criminal record, and seeing their professional role as different from custody's role. Most med staff are not directly Department of Corrections employees, they are independent sub-contractors. It's a tough balance to maintain. I admire those that can pull it off and provide decent medical care day-in-day out.
In CA, there has to be some support system in the community identified before compassionate release is granted. Family, halfway program, medical care, etc.