Comedian Bill Cosby is going to jail for at least three years, though he may serve as long as 10 years.
Pennsylvania judge Steven O’Neill called the 81-year-old actor a “sexually violent predator,” and along with prison time, ordered him to receive monthly counseling and register as a sex-offender. Cosby was found guilty in April for drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand, a woman 30 years younger and a former Temple University administrator, in 2004. Cosby, who has been accused of sexually assaulting about 60 other women, is the first man in the “Me Too” movement to go to jail.
The fallen actor’s defense attorney asked he serve house arrest, but the judge rejected. Though he will be in his mid-to-late 80s by the time he leaves state prison, he is far from the only elderly person serving jail time.
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About 11% of the U.S. state and federal prison population (or 160,000 people) is over 55 years old, 38,000 of whom are older than 65. By 2030, that figure will rise to 33%, or more than 400,000 people age 55 and older in prison, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The number of prisoners 55 and up has jumped 400% between 1993 and 2013, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Why? Because older prisoners, like Cosby will be, are serving longer sentences (mostly for violent offenses) and because the number of older people admitted to jails has increased, according to the bureau’s 2016 report. Sentences are usually longer for older people than other prisoners: older ones saw an average sentence length of 82 months (six years and 10 months) in 2013, compared with prisoners 18 to 39 who had an average sentence of 69 months (five years and nine months), according to the ACLU. For inmates aged 40 to 54, it was 71 months (five years and 11 months). Admission of people 55 and older increased 82% between 2003 and 2013. The government is also instituting longer sentences and more limited parole, according to the ACLU.
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Prisons are transforming to accommodate an older inmates. Some states have installed wheelchair ramps and shower handles, while others have created assisted living centers with full-time nursing staff, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. At least 75 prisons include hospice care, too.
And when older inmates do make it out of prison later in life, they often don’t have the means to generate retirement income. About 69% of previously-incarcerated older Americans said they felt anxious about retirement savings, compared with 52% of those who didn’t serve time, according to a 2017 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
