Eighty-eight years old, nearly blind and deaf, her mind enfeebled by Alzheimer’s and in the terminal stages of kidney failure, Helen Loheac was refused parole to a hospice, as are most elderly and dying prisoners, and died shackled at her waist and ankles with two guards at her bedside.
They were spending about $250,000 a year on Helen, if you include the cost of two prison guards who would always accompany her when she went to the hospital for dialysis about three times a week.
Sister Terry Dodge believes that denying older women parole after they’ve done their time is just politics and profits. “They mature out of criminal behavior.”
Prisoners with cancer and hepatitis are treated with Tylenol and Motrin.
“I saw one woman with throat cancer, who kept getting denied parole, fall into her own blood and die.”
Despite a Supreme Court ruling that inmates have a constitutional right to health care, a federal judge finds that an average of one inmate a week was dying of neglect or malpractice.