Dementia behind bars (a photo essay)

[ATCclears]

Dementia Behind Bars - Video Library - The New York Times

I enjoy photography and photo essays. I though this photo essay (or multi-media essay) was well done.

Peter

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[chemist]

It certainly offers food for thought. Those inmates seem so compassionate towards their charges, but how much of that is only because they're caged? No matter how truly repentant somebody is behind bars, they may not be able to resist temptation if they were ever released into the wild. How do you tell the predators from the ones that made a single, horrific mistake? And who should have to bear the risk of those cons re-offending after they're released?

Then again, the male of the species really does cool down with age, and violent crime is a young man's burden. Somebody needs to care for those poor, sick minds, and maybe the cons who do so could learn to become the people that we'd want them to be on the outside.

Senile dementia is a prison all its own, and the victims are often terrified as well as profoundly confused. I only hope that a heart attack claims me first.

 

[Cougfan2]

Senile dementia is a prison all its own, and the victims are often terrified as well as profoundly confused. I only hope that a heart attack claims me first.

My 92 year old mother is in an assisted/memory care facility in Kansas. Alzheimers is the cruelest disease you can imagine. You can't imagine the feeling of going to see your mother, sitting down with her and holding her hand and have her ask who you are. It's cruel to the afflicted and cruel to the family. It takes that person from you and from themselves........but they're still there.

I'm with you chemist. That's not the way I want to go out.