Put the elderly in prison and prisoners in homes for the elderly
PERSPECTIVE
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By Marjut Lindberg
In her recent editorial in Sairaanhoitaja, the Finnish professional journal for nurses, editor Kaarina Wilskman proposes that the elderly should be housed in prisons to receive really attentive care, while prison inmates should be placed in long-term care institutions to get some real punishment.
The proposal was meant to be deliberately provocative, but a comparison of prisons and care institutions for the elderly does reveal some interesting facts.
At any given time there are an average 3,500 inmates in Finnish prisons, and the turnover is about 7,000 a year. The costs of a single inmate are about EUR 43,100 a year, EUR 3,600 a month, and EUR 120 a day.
Currently there are more than 41,000 senior citizens in long-term care. If an old person lives in a service home offering intense care, his or her care costs about EUR 37 a day, and even in a home for the aged, the daily costs are less than EUR 100.
In homes for the aged it is quite normal for two staff members to have to care for 20 elderly residents during the day, while a single nurse is responsible for two wards at night. A medicine cabinet cheaply and efficiently compensates for the missing nurses.
Nurses hardly have enough time to spoon the last drops of cold soup into the residents' mouths before the day's second round of nappy changes is already overdue. There is little opportunity for therapeutic discussion - to say nothing of organising stimulating pastimes.
There is plenty of personnel for each inmate in the penal system - the number is just 300 less than the total number of prisoners. In addition to guards and administrative personnel, prisoners are helped by various therapists, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and doctors.
In addition, prisoners are given opportunities for exercise, and their return to society is supported by various excursions and hobbies. Most prisoners are ill, and they need good treatment.
The loss of freedom is a punishment for prisoners, to help them make amends for crimes ranging from burglary to murder. Prisoners rarely have any property or income that can be requisitioned, and even they do, they do not need to pay the costs of care or treatment.
If a senior citizen lives in an institution classified as open care facility, the local authority is authorised to take the resident's entire pension, if necessary, to cover the service costs. Institutionalised seniors classified as chronic patients must be allowed to keep EUR 80 a month for personal use.
Prisoners undoubtedly need all of the support that they now get. Finland has received a couple of reprimands from the Anti-Torture Committee of the Council of Europe, according to which some prisoners have been held in conditions that are not up to established standards.
Neither the Council of Europe, the UN, nor human rights organisations want to investigate how old people are treated in the care institutions of different countries. Undoubtedly many institutions would receive reprimands if poor treatment of the elderly were classified as torture.
It is not possible to swap institutions of prisoners and the elderly. Prisoners would certainly not agree to that. Nor would tax revenues be sufficient if every senior citizen were given treatment that costs as much as the annual earnings of a highly-paid employee.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.4.2004
MARJUT LINDBERG / Helsingin Sanomat
marjut.lindberg@hs.fi
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| 14.4.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 Put the elderly in prison and prisoners in homes for the elderly |
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