DES MOINES — A 79-year-old Iowa man convicted of kidnapping and sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl has died in prison.
The Iowa Corrections Department says Robert Padgett died Tuesday of natural causes stemming from dementia. He'd been housed at the Iowa State Penitentiary Hospice Care Unit.
Padgett was a convicted sex offender who'd been released from prison in April 1978 when he kidnapped the girl in 1979 from a dance studio in Fort Madison.
Police say Padgett took the girl to a motel in Coralville, held her captive there and sexually abused her for two days. He released her in Sigourney. ..Source.. by Iowa City Press-Citizen
The US' massive prison population is getting older.
Long sentences that were handed out decades ago are catching up with the American justice system.
Prisons across the country are dedicating entire units just to house the elderly.
During difficult economic times, the issue has hit a crisis point. Estimates are that locking up an older inmate costs three times as much as a younger one.
How are prisons dealing with this issue? Who are the prisoners that are turning gray behind bars?
Josh Rushing gains exclusive and unprecedented access to jails and prisons across the country to tell the story. ..Source.. by Fault Lines
Dying on the State's Dime
6-3-2010 Texas:
A gaunt old man, thick with whiskers and stricken with dementia, writhes under the covers of his bed. Down the hall, doctors monitor elderly diabetics with recently amputated limbs, medicate terminal cancer patients shuffling by with walkers and tether shivering dialysis patients to blood-cleaning machines.
Despite the pacing guards, the handcuffs and the bars on the windows, the geriatric and medical wing at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville looks more like a nursing home than a maximum-security prison.
Prison doctors routinely offer up the oldest and sickest of these inmates for medical parole, a way to get those who are too incapacitated to be a public threat and have just months to live out of medical beds that Texas’ quickly aging prison population needs. They’ve recommended parole for 4,000 such inmates within the last decade. But the state parole board, which makes the final decision on “medically recommended intensive supervision,” has only agreed in a quarter of these cases, leaving the others to die in prison — and on the state’s dime.
Texas’ “geriatric” inmates, classified as those 55 and older, make up just 7.3 percent of Texas’ 160,000-offender prison population. But they account for nearly a third of the system’s hospital costs and make three times as many visits to prison medical departments as younger inmates. Elderly inmates have average annual hospitalization costs of $4,700, compared to $765 for inmates under 55. In total, providing inmate medical care costs the state correctional health care system — already facing hundreds of employee layoffs amid a budget shortfall — nearly half a billion dollars a year.
Describes the specific medical conditions causing deaths in state prisons nationwide during a four-year period. For the leading medical causes of death, mortality rates are presented by gender, age, race and Hispanic origin, and the length of time served in prison.
The report includes detailed statistics on cancer deaths. Mortality among older prisoners is examined in detail. Prisoner death rates are compared with rates in the general U.S. resident population. Data on medical treatments provided for these fatal illnesses are presented, along with findings on the presence of medical problems at time of admission to prison.
State-by-state mortality rates are presented for the leading causes of illness deaths in appendix tables. Detailed data tables are included in the electronic version. ..Source.. by Christopher J. Mumola
Key Report: Specifically Tables 4-5 in PDF file: Shows how many sex offenders (Rpe and Other Sexual Assaults) have suicided or been murdered in jails and prisons.
Describes historical trends in State prison and local jail inmate mortality rates based on inmate death records submitted by local jails (for 2000-2002) and State prisons (for 2001-2002). The report also compares current prison and jail mortality rates by demographic characteristics, offense types, and facility size and jurisdiction and compares the general population mortality rates with mortality rates in correctional facilities. Comparisons are made to both the raw mortality rates for the general population and those standardized to match the demographic makeup of the inmate populations.
This report presents the first findings from the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program, which implements the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-297). This new program involves the collection of individual records for every inmate death in the Nation s local jails and State prisons. The program also includes the collection of death records from State juvenile correctional authorities (begun in 2002) and State and local law enforcement agencies (begun in 2003). ..Source.. by Christopher J. Mumola
3-19-15 Iowa:
