People 55 and over made up nearly 1 in 6 prisoners as of 2022, new report says.
America’s prison population is growing older at a pace that some experts say is unsustainable. As of 2022, the latest year with available data, people 55 and over made up nearly 1 in 6 prisoners — a fourfold increase since 2000 — and their numbers are projected to keep rising.
A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin warns that this trend is straining correctional systems that were not designed to care for older adults.
If current trends continue, the authors estimate that by 2030 as much as one-third of the U.S. prison population will be over 50.
“It puts it into perspective how bad that this has gotten,” said Alyssa Gordon, the report’s lead author. Gordon is an attorney and legal fellow with the ACLU National Prison Project. “People don’t realize that prisons are woefully equipped to handle this crisis.”
The findings are based on data from public records requests to all 50 state corrections departments, publicly available state prison population datasets and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some data, however, were not available for every state, limiting the authors’ ability to make extended state-by-state comparisons.
The report’s findings come as states face competing pressures: a nationwide crackdown on crime and public safety, tightening corrections budgets and severe overcrowding and staffing shortages.
