Grandma's Been Arrested

foreign has feared that phone call that begins Mr Jones Sergeant Smith here we have your son under arrest but how do you handle a call that begins Mr Jones We've just arrested your mother when you think of the elderly in crime it's usually as victims of crime but it may surprise you to learn that old people besides being victims are in increasing numbers becoming perpetrators of crime it's been estimated that in 1982 police arrested half a million people over the age of 55 mostly for shoplifting it's not really a major crime wave but the increase in numbers is enough to puzzle and concern criminologists this is a drugstore in Helendale Florida called drug world it's been estimated that in Broward County alone the bill for shoplifting amounts to over 80 million dollars a year the Casual looking Shopper is really Lucy Corsa the store Detective the stores that I work at a five percent of your shoplifters are elderly are over 60. that really amazes a lot of people but it is true say they don't like waiting in lines the store owes them something or it just dropped in their purse or their pocket and another one they're sick or they just don't know it's just so much of it here it's unbelievable a 60 Minutes camera I was in the store with Lucy loud I'm undo her left has put something from the drug Department into her handbag Lucy Waits at the cash register to see if the woman will pay for it [Music] excuse me dear I'm a store detective for drug world yeah I want to know if you had a receipt for your um laxatives no you're laxative visiting your first year I know I stuck it in walking over here all the time Chuck Hayes it's an officer with the Miami Beach police department and a part-time store detective it's funny when you use roam the store and you watch them and you watch the way they do it they know what they're doing um I I know a lot of people say they're so now and they don't know what they're doing it's not true if you watch them and you see their movements you can tell that they've generally and this is not just elderly people but it's it's most people who do shoplifting but they've done it for a long time when do they do it are they are they broke and they need the toothpaste well I think the main reason people do it is to get something for nothing this is a session of the county court for Dade County Florida everyone in here today that's a defendant is facing possible jail time in the Dade County jail for a period of time up to one year Judge David gerstein who presides over a Dade County court in Florida probably sees more elderly shoplifters than any other judge in America charge against his shoplifting sir how do you please I don't know what happened to me event in my head or something so I deserve the punishment whatever you give me charge against you is shoplifting now all right how do you play guilty how do you place our guilty sir [Music] how long have you lived in South Florida three and a half years so you retired down here yes they're in front of the court for the first time probably in their whole life and that includes even a traffic matter first time and they're scared to death and come up and they're they're not looking at you you're sitting up on the bench they're a few feet below you and they're looking down and we'll say Mrs Smith uh you know the charge against you yes your honor how do you plea I guess I'm guilty but let me explain myself all I can say this is the first time I'm appearing before a judge I used to be on jury duty I am very popular in my neighborhood I'm very active I went in the store not even knowing I picked up these things and I carried in my hand and I'm walking out in the security guard runs in front of me and he's not putting on the under arrest and I said what for I was shocked he says as I saw you put the nail polish in your back I said oh my god I didn't even know I have it there what do you do with them that's a problem for myself I can't put them in jail for shoplifting a first-time offense I mean by law you could go to jail for 60 days but I can't see putting a a 70 year old lady who recently lost her husband in jail for any period of time I couldn't do it I place them in The Advocate Program with Mr Al Mally they meet with all the senior citizens in a probably once or twice a week they get around in a discussion group and they talk about problems that they have the senior citizens have problems today that probably they never had before I'm going to suspend the fine at twenty five dollars it'll be ten dollars in court costs and placement in The Advocate Program with Mr Malley this by the way is also Miss Jones over here works with the United States no no Record Man for this one time but if it happens again it's a whole other story I don't expect it to happen again all right Al Mali Runs The Advocate Program in Miami which offers counseling to elderly offenders instead of jail sentences they see themselves as a deprived person person who's lived a good life but suddenly he's deprived at have no fault of their own and as they go around they are treated as second-rate Citizens they have diminished status they no longer have the a job the self-esteem that goes with being productive so we have a situation we have a person who feels deprived who has lost an awful lot of life and who has very low self-esteem and that's a natural setup to act out in an anti-social way alternatives to prison like The Advocate Program in Miami are working for petty crimes like shoplifting but what about serious crime more and more elderly people are engaging in felonies like murder robbery and aggravated assault according to the FBI the arrest rate for serious crime increased only three percent over the period from 1970 to 1980. in that same period the arrest rate for people over 55 increased a remarkable 46 percent Donald Newman is Dean of the school of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York in Albany we're talking about people who are relatively clean and don't commit their crimes until they are at or near retirement but they are not they are not criminals who grow old there are per there are persons who grow old and then became Criminal what kind of crimes well it runs the the gamut of uh of ordinary crime um about a third of the arrests of the elderly are for violent crimes and those are homicide uh assault and sex crimes sex crimes well mostly involving children yes it's a male elderly and children in the cases of the assaults are they usually on the other elderly people or the people they know that's right exactly and same with homicide the point keeps coming up that these people live in clusters so is is there something wrong with the way older older people are treated in the society I I think there is uh uh they certainly are disenfraged this is a youth-oriented society say this we got two problems I think with elderly criminals we got the problem the first problem is what causes them to do it and I think that's essentially gerontological the status of the elderly looked down on we have no role models we don't respect our elderly just the opposite the second question we have one that particularly interests me is a is a chronological question and that is assuming that there are elderly criminals what do you do with them and if they are convicted what happens to them in the system they go to jail or to prison we have about 80 000 elderly people in the state and federal prisons now uh what do the prisons do they have to rehabilitate them teach them a new trade they are good they are working in prison industry just at the time other people are retiring from work and what's the objective is it going to deter people is it going to rehabilitate them it just doesn't fit they just don't fit kick this man for instance Nick is 58 years old works as a cook inside the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh he's serving five to ten years on a drug charge it was his first offense Mario is 60 years old and works on the prison grounds as a gardener he's serving 10 to 20 years for second-degree murder it was his first offense stovepipe is 60 years old and is serving 10 to 20 years for third degree murder it was his first offense Avery is 62 years old had no previous arrests until his conviction for third degree murder he's now serving 9 to 18 years all of these men have participated in a counseling program called project 60 which is directed at the older inmate and you don't want to come back here if you get up don't want to I'm not coming back not at my age I never come back to jail I'm up in age and I want to come back to jail they end up getting here as old as I am see the thing about uh how that people shouldn't be able to come back because I think that they should have more sense and it's an idea of you've had enough you know what's right and wrong a young man he makes mistakes on impulses but an old man when he makes mistakes is serious because he feels no better so you got a conscious you've got a deep conscience because you have experience in life so why should you keep on making the same mistake over and over again but if I was young as a devil I could have an excuse from making mistakes but I have no excuse since I was an age you get hassled or bothered by the younger inmates you're in here this is actually as a another city or a world all of its own it has its own rules and regulations that you have to abide by there's a lot of guys in here that got life double life's triple life sentences running wildly 40 to 80 50 to 150 or 300 years and that and you're going to go up and get and start popping off to a guy like that look at it they said what's he got to lose the man who started project 60 is Braden Walter he is now dean of student affairs at Carnegie Mellon University could you make a guess if you've got 155 elderly prisoners in Pennsylvania how many of them belong here is it safe to turn 80 of them loose not without a great deal of help it isn't I don't advocate that 80 of them could leave without continued and ongoing programs like the kind of service we provided no I wouldn't want to see that happen at all how many people did you get out in Paris from 1973 to the present do we advocated in support of over 300 people during that period how many are back in no one who came back to prison for committing another crime but they had a lot of work done with them um someone a therapist worked with them from the day they met them through a whole therapeutic program while they were in prison and walked literally walked out the prison door with him walk back in the community providing the same kind of therapy is that work still going on no why government chose for it not to be a priority When government money started getting tougher and tougher to get they began to cut programs right and left but the arithmetic would show that over even a five-year period it would save money so he would it's anticipated that it costs between 50 and 25 000 to keep somebody in prison for a year and with the added costs of medical problems for older people it's going to be much higher it'll cost me a thousand dollars a year to work with a prisoner and give them comprehensive service both prior to release and Post Release is it going to get worse it's going to get worse if we look very carefully at the demographics uh what's going to happen to this country in terms of age population kinds of things moving into the turn of the century the country is getting much much older and it's going to continue to do so as we do that we're going to have more people committing crime and the prisons are going to have a larger percentage of population that is older is already looking that way now but over a period of time it's going to become significantly higher it may be worthwhile developing really very cost effective alternatives to arrest alternatives to jail Alternatives and prosecution we rarely get a chance to see a problem coming at us and this is a problem that combines the two most serious domestic problems we have all Asian crime