“We should place the elderly in prisons. They will get a shower a day, video surveillance in case of problems, three meals a day, access to a library, computer, TV, gym, doctors on-site, medication if needed, all paid for by you & I!

Put criminals in nursing homes. They have cold meals, lights off at 7pm, two showers a week, live in a small room and pay rent at $4,000 a month!!! It's pretty sad that we treat prisoners better than the elderly.... lets not forget, you can get a better education in Prison than at school!” 

I recently saw this post on Facebook and  felt that the best people to answer this were incarcerated in prisons. I do advocacy work for men in prisons in Texas so I wrote to them asking them to give their opinion on this post. I received some very thoughtful letters. I am posting them here for people to read so that everyone can get a better understanding of what it is like to be in prison. 

One very interesting fact is that there are thousands of elderly already in prison. Many of them have been there since they were very young. These elderly are costing the tax payers thousands of dollars and are receiving sub standard care. They would be much better off in nursing home and would cost the taxpayers much less money. 

Please read the statement of these men and think about what we can do to change the way our prisoners are handled. As you can see, these men are not complaining about their punishment, just the lack of understanding of how things really are.