Bill Cosby wassentenced to three to 10 yearsin a state prison on Tuesday Sept. 25 , after being convicted on three enumeration of aggravated indecent assault back in April . Cosby , who is 81 years sometime and legally unreasoning , was taken from the courthouse in manacle . His bail was reverse . His attorney had inquire for sign halt because of his eld and health .
The Cosby casing raise a discomforting interrogative . Should elderly offenders be treated more laxly by the courts than immature outlaw , because they have less time allow for to exist , and because their forcible frailty might make it more difficult for them to survive a prison house condition ?
For judges , it ’s a difficult call .
" Ten twelvemonth for a 70 - twelvemonth - old is different from 10 years for a 40 - year - older , " explainsDouglas A. Berman , a jurisprudence professor at Ohio State University ’s Moritz College of Law and a nationally regarded expert on sentencing constabulary . " There ’s a significant chance that a 70 - twelvemonth - sure-enough may not live through it . " For someone such as Cosby , " functionally , even a shorter sentence can become the equivalent of life without parole . "
While the rules motley from state to state , judges also often have considerable leeway to take a suspect ’s age into account , Berman pronounce . The federal organisation only postulate that a judge consider the chronicle and characteristic of a suspect , and those obscure bound allow jurists the selection of extending mercy to geriatric offenders . At the country level , the necessity vary , but " there seldom are formal rules that say expressly that you ca n’t conceive about age , or you have to do so . So it leads to a range of dissimilar evaluator weighing this factor , as well as other diverse factors at sentencing , " says Berman .
The comparatively few studies on the theme suggest that judges do often give old offenders a break . Onestudypublished in the Journals of Gerontology : Series B in 2000 found that in Pennsylvania royal court , offender in their 60s were 25 percent less likely to be sentenced to prison than those who were in their 20s , and their sentences were eight months shorter on average . Those who were in their 70s got an even sweeter deal — they were 30 percent less likely to stop up behind bars than 20 - somethings , and those who were incarcerated serve 13 month less on average .
A Senior Citizen Discount?
More recently , astudyby Arizona State University researchers , put out in 2014 in the daybook Criminal Justice Studies , similarly found that in the Union court arrangement , justice give old wrongdoer a " senior citizen discount " when it came to poky time .
Berman said that sentencing elderly defendants raises challenging question about the intention of sentencing — in peculiar , whether the focus should be on penalization for the damage induce by an offender , or upon protect society from further criminal offence .
If protection is the most important constituent , elderly criminals might seem to deserve a break , because research shows that they ’re far less likely to intrust additional law-breaking . A December 2017reportby the U.S. Sentencing Commission , for lesson , found that over an eight year stop , only 13.4 percentage of wrongdoer who were released from Union prisons at age 65 were eventually rearrested for other crimes . For wrongdoer under the age 30 , in contrast , 53 percent were arrested again .
But Cosby might not inevitably benefit from that reasoning . There ’s less certainty about whether sex offenders rise out of committing crimes as they get on , Berman says .
Another authoritative factor is the elderly suspect ’s history . A evaluator may have reservation about consecrate a lighter time to a individual who committed crimes for years but was n’t caught and convicted until old years . In Cosby ’s case , for lesson , the evaluator allowed prosecutors to put on witnesses who accused Cosby of committing alike sexual urge crimesas far back as 1982 .
When judges are mull over sentences for senior defendants , " There ’s a hesitation to give them the benefit of escaping justice for so long , " Berman say .
But that may be balanced by another broker — the difficulty and expense of gaol older offenders , whose health care call for toll between four and eight times what youthful captive expect , according to thePew Charitable Trusts .
" It really does n’t count whether we ’re talking about the federal system or those of any res publica , " Hank Fradella , a professor and associate music director of the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and one of the source of the 2014 study on federal sentencing , says in an email . " The fact of the issue is that it cost a lot of money to care for old prisoners who have health problems . Some systems ( like the Union one ) have specialized correctional facilities that , obviously , be much more money to hunt down than other types of correctional adroitness . Even if states have extra social unit to do the same , they are often cash - strapped and ineffectual to supply the storey of concern that badly unhealthy inmates require . "
" As a result , many Department of State usecompassionate firing programsto discharge seriously ominous offenders from their correctional systems , " Fradella write . " But that really does n’t help many yardbird since they may not have anywhere else to go . Their social support system may be washy to nonexistent because they have been incarcerated . "
