E G N A R O Y GRA
30 FEATURE
SEVEN DAYS
01.22.14-01.29.14
SEVENDAYSVt.com
is the new
Vermont’s prisons struggle to accommodate an aging population by K ath ry n Flag g • ph otos by tom mcnei ll
A
n old man, hunched over and weak, scoots to the edge of his bed and struggles, slowly, into a pair of loose gray sweatpants. “I’m going to make myself something to eat now,” he tells the superintendent making the rounds. “Beef stew.” He gestures to the container of instant noodles on a cluttered bedside table. “They sell this in the commissary?” Mark Potanas asks, not unkindly. Then he moves on — through the 10-bed infirmary, past the offices of nurses and physician assistants. Outside, in the sharp cold of a clear winter day, a few old-timers huddle in wheelchairs on the edge of a bleak yard, their standard-issue orange stocking caps pulled snug over their ears. And in nearby Charlie Unit, men sit quietly at communal tables, bent over playing cards and magazines. Their
adjacent single rooms are claustrophobic but offer a small, cherished measure of privacy. One white-haired man with an eye patch peeks out from behind his door, then retreats back inside. Hospital? Nursing home? No: It’s prison — though Vermont’s Southern State Correctional Facility increas ingly functions as all three. Almost 20 percent of the prisoners at the 377-bed maximum-security prison in Springfield are ages 50 years or older; demographically speaking, that’s how the “elderly” prison population is defined. “They’ve had a hard life,” says Potanas — himself a strapping, clean-cut 60-year-old — and it shows. The same factors that contribute to incarceration — chief among them, poverty and substance abuse — go hand in hand with poor health and limited access to care f or medical, dental and mental health needs.
During a tour in late November, Potanas rattled off the details: Nine prisoners in wheelchairs. Roughly another 10 with walkers or canes. Men suffering from cancer, liver and kidney disease. A f ew showing early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. “This is its own city,” said Potanas. “Aging is a problem in society, and corrections is a microcosm of society.” The number of geriatric inmates nationwide is on the rise. In Vermont alone, the proportion of aging in mates more than doubled between 2000 and 2013, now accounting for 15.2 percent of the inmate population. Vermont’s correctional facilities are struggling to keep up with their needs. “We designed Charlie with this in mind,” Potanas said of the unit that became the first of its kind in Vermont when the prison was built in 2003. “However,