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Exploding Number Of Elderly Prisoners Strains System, Taxpayers
Bernard "Bernie" Madoff, James "Whitey" Bulger" and Anthony Marshall -- three high-profile defendants who stand to spend their twilight years behind bars.
By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
The 89-year-old son of late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor became the oldest person ever hauled off to New York prison for a non-violent crime last Friday, four years after he was convicted of plundering his mother's massive fortune.
Apparently too frail to stand, Anthony Marshall was pushed to his jail cell in a wheelchair trailed by an oxygen tank. A pillar of Upper East Side privilege had become a monument to age and infirmity.
Marshall now joins the ranks of other high-profile, graying defendants – including accused former mobster James “Whitey” Bulger and convicted financial fraudster Bernard "Bernie" Madoff – who stand to spend their twilight years behind bars.
And they’re by no means alone: Prisoners older than 55 make up the single fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison community – a largely invisible shadow population.
The number of elderly Americans doing hard time is swelling at a staggering rate and will only continue to balloon, researchers say.
An estimated 246,000 convicts above age 50 were in jail cells across the country last year, according to a June 2012 American Civil Liberties report.
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http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/29/19192029-exploding-number-of-elderly-prisoners-strains-system-taxpayers?lite
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