NELSONVILLE, Ohio - Gray-haired men loosen up stiff muscles before diving into a spirited chair-aerobics class, counting out the reps to a bass-thumping soundtrack.
Down the hall, a small group is caught up in a chess match, kibitzing with the players and chatting with each other.
If all this senior citizen activity wasn't occurring behind bars and rolls of razor wire, it would be hard to distinguish it from a retirement community.
But the men at Hocking Correctional Institution, nestled among the rolling hills here in rural southeast Ohio, aren't just passing time; they're doing time - lots of it in some cases.
As frail as some of them are now, at one time during their lives they were killers, child molesters, and drug dealers.
Twenty-seven years ago in Dover, Ohio, Bob Hershberger shot his wife, Beatrice, in the chest and the head, drove her to a hospital, and handed his gun to a security guard.
He's been in prison ever since.
At 74, Hershberger doesn't fit the Hollywood version of a ruthless killer turned into a hardened con. With his gray hair neatly slicked back, wire-rimmed spectacles, and drooping pants, he looks like a grandpa.
“I can't say for sure if I'll ever make it out,” Hershberger said, his white socks slipping down to reveal brown age spots on his ankles. “When I go back to the parole board next March, I don't know what they'll have for me.”
The oldest prisoner in an Ohio state prison is 90-year-old Moses Miller, who hopes he'll be freed from Hocking Correctional after his next parole hearing in November.
A frail man with Coke bottle-thick glasses, long bony fingers, and a white scar on the top of his head, Miller has been in prison since he was 77 after being convicted in Cincinnati for voluntary manslaughter.
Asked whether he thinks a man his age should be in prison, he chuckled and gave a practical reply: “Evidently, I don't have no choice.”
These men are part of an increasingly graying prison population that has become a source of concern for some in the corrections community.
Last year, about 103,000 prisoners nationwide were above the age of 50, which is about 8.6 percent of the overall prison population in the state and federal systems, according to the Corrections Yearbook, published by the Criminal Justice Institute.
Dr. Ronald Aday, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University who studies geriatric prison issues, said the population for inmates above 50 is increasing by about 10 percent annually.
The surge in older inmates has triggered debates over how to meet their health needs and whether prison is even the right place for convicts who are old and sick.
Since Ohio eliminated parole in favor of definite sentences in 1996, inmates are staying in prison longer. The same year the legislature adopted a life-without-parole law for some murderers, meaning certain prisoners will be in state institutions until they die.
That makes Ohio one of the states that is incarcerating inmates longer than they once did. Accordingly, prison officials have to figure out how to provide health care for older inmates - considered to be above 50 or 60 depending on the state - who are beset by the same health problems as the rest of us. In many cases, those inmates suffer even more illnesses because of the hard lives they've often lived before they were sent to prison.
Like all prison expenses, taxpayers have to foot the bill for the health care costs of elderly inmates. It costs significantly more to care for the roughly 4,500 male and female inmates 50 and older in Ohio than it does for younger prisoners. About 45,000 prisoners are in the state system.
At Hocking Correctional, where the average age for a prisoner is 62, the cost is $3,850 annually to cover medical expenses for each of the institution's approximately 400 inmates, according to Kay Northrup, deputy director of the Office of Correctional Health Care for the state's prison system.
That's about $1,500 more per prisoner annually than at the state's Montgomery Education and Pre-Release Center in Dayton, where most of the inmates are young.
It's no mystery why it's so much more expensive to care for older prisoners, Ms. Northrup said. Medicine and treatment for heart attacks, prostate cancer, and arthritis isn't cheap inside or outside prison walls.
“A lot of it is cost,” Ms. Northrup said. “It's not that you have to provide such different services, but they need more of them.”
Ohio has a good reputation for caring for its older prisoners among those who pay attention to the issue across the U.S., said Herbert Rosefield, a health care consultant for prisons and former health care administrator of North Carolina's prison system.
Reginald Wilkinson, director of Ohio's prison system, said it's been only in the last few years that many states are moving beyond talk and are starting to address the topic seriously.
“I think it's a concern because it means more money that we need for medications and more money to deal with a population that's growing older,” said Mr. Wilkinson, whom experts in the field consider a forward thinker on the subject. “The fear is that the older they get, the more expensive they're going to get.”
Having a separate facility like Ohio's Hocking Correctional to house elderly inmates is somewhat rare. Of the 46 state prison systems responding to a recent survey published by the American Corrections Association, only 16 offered separate housing, which could mean anything from a geriatric wing to a free-standing structure.
Mr. Rosefield said states can care for elderly inmates in their general population, but it's much more efficient to set up wings or separate institutions.
Having such facilities allows older inmates to feel safer and lets administrators set up health care and programming that meet the needs of the prisoners, Mr. Rosefield said.
“There are so many issues related to being older that, if you don't have enough older inmates concentrated, it's very difficult for a facility to stop and deal with that for 2 or 3 percent of their population,” Mr. Rosefield said.
Ralph Johnson slowly rolled his wheelchair past a shuffleboard court, brilliant sunlight glinting off the chair's metal frame and the fence that surrounds the exercise yard.
After serving time in far tougher prisons like Mansfield Correctional, Johnson, 51, feels far more comfortable with the older cons in Hocking.
“There ain't all that young bunch and the wildness and gang-related stuff,” said Johnson, who has served eight years of a five-to-15-year sentence for stabbing a man.
Hershberger - who not only looks like a grandfather but is one - has been at Hocking for six years after doing time at Chillicothe Correctional and Southern Ohio Correctional in Lucasville for his wife's shooting. The latter was the site of a prison riot in 1993 that left nine inmates and one guard dead.
Life at Hocking Correctional is far more sedate for Hershberger. There are few fights or serious disruptions because he and other inmates - who range in age from 17 to 90 - know how good they have it compared to other prisons.
But the relative calm doesn't change the fact that it's still a prison and that most inmates, except those who have become so institutionalized that they're afraid to leave, want to be released. Hershberger, who had a heart attack two years ago, hopes to live with his grandson in Columbus and enjoy whatever time he has left with his family.
Many academics studying the issue wonder whether it makes sense to keep people like Hershberger in prison after so much time has been served and there's little threat to society upon release.
Barry Holman, director of research and public policy for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives near Washington, said many elderly prisoners pose no threat to society anymore.
Getting older, Mr. Holman said, appears to decrease one's inclination to commit violent crimes. “The research is pretty clear that criminal activity, particularly violent criminal activity, is highly correlated with age,” Mr. Holman said. “If you look at people who are coming into prison off probation, parole, or a new offense, only about 1.5 percent are over the age of 55.”
Half of the prisoners older than 55 nationwide are doing time for nonviolent offenses, a group Mr. Holman says could be placed somewhere other than a prison, such as a halfway house or on parole.
But Mr. Holman's idea brings up the tricky question everyone in the justice system wrestles with at some point: Are people sent to prison to protect society or to be punished? Is 27 years enough time to punish people like Bob Hershberger when statistics show he's unlikely to commit such a crime again?
The answers to those questions are elusive and depend on the circumstances of each case.
“All the statistics suggest they don't repeat, but at the same time many of the older offenders are in for sex offenses and that's not the kind of population you give a break to necessarily,” said Mr. Wilkinson, director of Ohio's prison system.
Old age alone is hardly enough of a factor to free many men, even if they've served long stretches on life sentences, said Julia Bates, Lucas County prosecutor. She put away child rapists and murderers early in her career as an assistant prosecutor that she said should be held until their sentences end.
“The problem is that the people they killed don't get to come back 20 years later,” Mrs. Bates said. “You can still do bad stuff when you're old.”
Older women can do bad stuff too. Of the 2,744 inmates at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, 192 were 50 or older as of January.
The prison offers a self-contained unit for women who have health problems, so they don't have to walk throughout the facility. About 58 women were living in that unit in July, including some healthy inmates who help their more frail counterparts, said Jo Ellen Culp, a spokeswoman for the state's prison system.
Even advocates of early release aren't calling for the state's most violent prisoners - let alone people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy - to be set free. But inmates who killed years ago in the heat of passion and many nonviolent offenders could be let out without being a threat to society, according to Dr. Aday, the Middle Tennessee State professor.
The “get tough on crime” mentality so many politicians hang their hats on is driving up the 50-and-older prison population by 10,000 people every year, said Dr. Aday, who is editing a book with Mr. Holman about how prisons should manage elderly inmates.
“Eventually that is going to create significant problems for states - to be able to afford to keep people in prison until they die - because then you're talking about end-of-life issues,” he said. “I don't really think it's a good use of our resources to keep people in nursing home settings in our prisons.”
If politicians decide keeping elderly inmates locked up is the way to go, there is a duty to provide them with good health care, said Dr. Rod Gottula, former president of the Society of Correctional Physicians.
He said many states haven't taken the necessary steps to address the needs of older inmates, which are different from the needs of younger prisoners, who make up about 91 percent of the prison population.
“I frankly think it's extremely stupid to leave 90-year-olds or 80-year-olds in a prison system where you're spending multiple thousands of dollars, not including health care costs,” said Dr. Gottula, the former medical director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.
In the hush of Hocking Correctional's orderly library, where old men sit around and read newspapers or browse the book collection, two men banter about their release dates.
“I'll be out when I'm 72,” said one.
“I'll be 308,” the other fired back with mock seriousness. “I better take my heart pills.”
Though joking, some of the men know they'll never make it out of prison alive. Each year a few inmates from Hocking die, though it's usually in a hospital, said Bill Tanner, the prison's warden until he was transferred recently to another institution.
Kevin Bryan, a unit manager in Hocking Correctional, said it takes patience for guards and administrators to learn to deal with inmates like Miller and Hershberger, especially if they're used to handling younger, tougher prisoners.
In order to put themselves in the inmates' shoes, staff members go through training sessions during which they wear yellow-tinted scratched glasses, put cotton in their ears, and wear gloves while trying to pick things up. This helps mimic the normal loss of vision, hearing, and touch that can occur with the elderly and allows guards to understand why it may take some inmates longer to complete jobs or respond to questions.
“If an inmate comes in and he's agitated, the first thing I do is calm him down. Most of the time he's agitated or frustrated because he has a disability,” Mr. Bryan said. “It takes some a longer time to process the thought. It's just a totally different setting than what you're used to with a younger population.”
Many of the prisoners move cautiously through Hocking Correctional, on their way to mandatory jobs or voluntary exercise classes designed to keep them active as a way to cut down on medical expenses.
Limiting health care costs makes good business sense for the state prison system, but programming that fosters positive habits also is significant because it could keep inmates from getting into trouble with the law again, Mr. Wilkinson said.
“One of the things we think is important is not just dealing with the older inmates, but helping people grow old so that they can manage their lives after they leave our prison population,” he said.
The first step in most cases is helping people get a grip on their health problems. Jerry Patton, the nursing supervisor at Hocking, said he sees most of the prisoners at least once every three months.
Doctors, podiatrists, dentists, optometrists, and pharmacists come to the prison to provide services. For difficult cases, the prison has a Telemed system that allows doctors at Ohio State University to view patients through a camera and get heart and blood-pressure readings with the help of staffers at Hocking. The inmates can see the doctors through a television monitor.
Mr. Patton said the system helps cut down on trips to hospitals, which are costly because guards have to accompany the inmate. Nonetheless, some trips to hospitals are unavoidable, and Lifeflight helicopters are even called into service for emergencies.
“We have a lot of medical problems - a lot of chronic medical problems - people with heart problems, lung problems, infectious diseases, diabetes,” Mr. Patton said.
Some of the prisoners get too sick to stay at Hocking, which requires inmates to be able to get around and work. Very ill patients are sent to units designed to deal with their needs.
Frazier Health Center in the Orient Correctional Institution has an assisted-living unit that can care for 119 prisoners.
The Corrections Medical Center in Columbus has beds dedicated to long and short-term care, including a six-bed hospice facility to which some prisoners go to die.
Mr. Wilkinson estimated in a publication about older prisoners that in 2025, 25 percent of the prison population nationwide will be 50 or older. If that comes to pass, it's not too speculative to think the demand for long-term care and hospice beds will increase.
The need for hospice care is an unappealing thought for any inmate, said Vernon Strickland, 58, who is serving his second stint in prison, this time seven months for forgery and drug possession.
Lying in the infirmary with oxygen tubes in his nose after a short bout of breathlessness, Strickland said: “Nobody wants to admit it, but no one wants to die in prison.”
First Published August 12, 2001, 10:58 a.m.
