Best Option, Geriatric Care

It’s pretty clear that Kansans are not willing to put out the money to build more prisons in the state. So, more and more, the best option to solve the Kansas State Department of Corrections overcoming problem appears to be transferring geriatric prisoners to less secure and less costly facilities.

Sending the state’s nearly 500-aging and disabled prisoners to facilities in places like Oswego, Stockton and Jamestown will make room for the state’s growing number of violent-crime prisoners in facilities to be held in facilities at places like Lansing, Hutchinson and Ellsworth.

A proposed geriatric facility in Oswego would be able to house about half of the state’s geriatric prisoners and the old rest home in Jamestown that is currently sitting idle, one of several sites the State Department of Corrections has looked at as possible locations to house the other half.

The violent prisoner escape recently from the Ottawa County Jail has put the state’s prison overcrowding problem squarely in the public eye.

The four escapees were part of a group of 20 prisoners that were transferred to the Ottawa County Jail because of overcrowding at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility.