John C. Walshe

Elderly Lives Matter Too John C. Walshe

One of the main points of this book is to question should we incarcerate the elderly especially who suffer from a mental illness? If we incarcerate the elderly how should they be treated? Our prisons are full of elderly people who have suffered a mental breakdown and are presently suffering from a mental illness. Also can we treat a 70-year-old as we do a 20-year-old while incarcerated? The obvious answer to that question is no but yet we do treat them the same. I wish to demonstrate that incarceration time for the elderly is much worse than it is for the young or middle age and even worse yet for the mentally ill. This should be taken into consideration when prosecuting and sentencing the elderly or mentally ill. Can you treat a mentally ill person the same as a person who is not suffering from a mental illness? I would like to believe that most Americans would answer the previous two question with a big "No" Yes, I will agree there are a minority who are still so dangerous to their fellow man even at a late age that they have to be incarcerated but again I believe it is a small minority. How should we treat elderly who have mental breakdowns as so many will? In the United States if a person has a mental breakdown they are three times as likely to wind up in a prison than an appropriate hospital or mental institution. Should our prisons be filled with the mentally ill as they now are? The older we get the more susceptible we are to a mental breakdown as the incidence of dementia substantiates. As an example consider how vulnerable the elderly are to Alzheimer's disease the largest form of dementia as we age. The incidence of Alzheimer's disease is 17% for the age group of 65 to 74 years and 47% for 75 to 84 years. It almost triples in just a decade. Before we prosecute do we make the proper effort to diagnose to find out why the elderly and people as a whole commit crimes? In my case why does a man in his so-called golden years become a criminal after living a productive, law abiding and good life? Did I just repress my criminal instincts and desires for six decades or did I repress my feelings from traumatic events which could lead to mental illness?