SHOE LEATHER: Reported Stories

Old and Out of Prison

Illness and addiction vex the life of an elderly ex-offender

by Noelle Yeager

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Bobby Grossi, Jr. wrestled with whether he needed to go looking for his father, an ex-offender who had a way of vanishing. Bobby didn’t really need to see the dust of white powder to know what his dad was chasing. Twelve and a half years in correctional facilities across three states plus time in six different rehabilitation programs and two therapeutic communities hadn’t cured or even tempered his father’s numerous addictions. But what had changed for the son was his own heightened sense of concern for his dad. This time his father was 60 and ill.

In the past, when his father was a younger man, Bobby dealt with his dad’s relapses with a degree of detachment. Though he worried, reality tempered his concerns. The man who was missing was a man Bobby, now 41, hardly knew. On this bender, however, the potential dangers of his dad’s exploits were not so easily dismissed. In prison, the National Institute of Corrections reports, chronological and physical years are two vastly different numbers. Inmates who serve significant time age some 12 years more rapidly than the average American. At 60, Bobby’s father had the broken body of an unhealthy man of 72.

His serial convictions, including the most recent four-year sentence he served for attempted burglary, add support to the science of recidivism. As reported by the Bureau of Justice’s statistics, convicted burglars have a 74 percent chance of being re-arrested. Perhaps naively, Bobby thought his dad had finally broken the cycle. Having paid for his crime with time, Robert "Bob" Grossi, Sr. was, as of March 2010, free once again. At first, it seemed like he was getting back on his feet, and the good friend with whom he was living reported as much. With a stable place to stay and $18,000 saved from an inheritance, Grossi, Sr. had more than enough money for a new start. Instead, he squandered it all on alcohol and drugs.

Rumors of prostitutes, crack houses, and drug dealers filtered back to Bobby, along with a photo of his father from prison. The man in the picture was unrecognizably aged. But the airfare from Reno, N.V. to Ithaca, N.Y. was too sizable an investment for Bobby to purchase a plane ticket. If this latest escapade ended in a funeral, so be it. Bobby was not going to go searching for his father.

shoe   shoe   shoe

Until his release from the Greater Binghamton Health Center, a New York state mental health facility with a post-prison wellness program, Grossi, Sr. was among the now 2.3 million inmates housed in the U.S. penal system, a community that consistently outpaces regular population growth. From 1980 to 2010, while the U.S. population grew 36 percent, state and federal prison populations increased 400 percent. At the end of 2011, the Bureau of Justice reported that 1 in every 107 U.S. adults were incarcerated.

As reported by the Bureau of Justice, of 2011’s nearly 1.6 million inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons, some 246,600, or 15 percent, are over 50 years old and thus classified as elderly by the National Institute of Corrections, though this is not yet the common standard. In fact, each state has its own definition of "geriatric," making consistent data difficult to come by. Some set the age at 50; some 55. Dr. Patrick Vinck has encountered the problem repeatedly in his efforts to study data from the Bureau of Justice’s National Corrections Reporting Program. Vinck is a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health who also contributes to the studies published by Human Rights Watch. "We have inmates for whom we don’t have the gender, and that would be information that would be pretty obvious to report about," he explained. "The quality of the data isn’t something that is improving. It’s certainly not enough."

Using statistics from the Bureau of Justice, the Human Rights Watch study Vinck assisted with found that while the number of prisoners in the system under the age of 55 grew only 42 percent between 1995 and 2010, the number of elderly prisoners grew 282 percent -- nearly tripling -- in the same period. Study these numbers, and a shockingly expensive trend emerges: By 2030, the ACLU estimates, more than one third of all prisoners in the United States will be classified as old.

This growth in the graying prison population is startling enough for Human Rights Watch and the ACLU to begin questioning whether it makes sense to keep aged and, in most cases, ailing offenders locked up. Does society really benefit from keeping a 60-year-old man with a disabling back injury jailed? It’s an important question. Few, however, pause to consider whether early release programs, the solution both groups favor, benefit elderly men like Grossi, Sr., an aging addict who has trouble staying clean. Since his release from New York state prison, Grossi has suffered at least three major relapses.

By 2030, the ACLU estimates, more than one third of all prisoners in the United States will be classified as old.

The enormous additional cost of housing older incarcerates is one persuasive argument for their early release. Each year, state and federal governments spend nearly $77 billion to keep criminals off the streets. On average, a prison will spend more than $34,000 annually to house a typical inmate. But an inmate over the age of 50 costs more than twice that amount -- an estimated $68,270 per year, the ACLU calculates. This figure includes the increased costs in medical care as well as special considerations for age-related issues such as decreased mobility. Using the ACLU’s figures, if all 246,600 elderly inmates were released, state and federal governments would save an aggregate total of more than $16 billion each year. So, why not just let the older prisoners out? Releasing elderly inmates who have pricey medical issues similar to Grossi, Sr. would no doubt save the prison systems a good bit of cash.

All the same, once on the outside, new issues emerge. Men of Grossi, Sr.’s physical and chronological age have a more difficult time than younger men when trying to rebuild the lives their incarceration put on hold. After spending a sixth of his life in state prisons, there is almost nothing fresh about Grossi’s new start.

“Your family has left you, you don’t know your children ‘cause you’ve been locked up so long they stopped writin’, she met another man and sent you a Dear John letter, [and] you can’t work ‘cause you’re not qualified,” Grossi, Sr. explained in one of a series of telephone interviews over the course of eight months. He speaks in contractions with a meditative Southern drawl. “Because” is always “cause,” “them” becomes “‘em,” and a gerund rarely ends in a final g. “Really,” he asked over the phone, “What do we got to look forward to?”

shoe   shoe   shoe

There are names for men like Grossi, Sr. -- ex-convicts who make a habit of returning to correctional systems. “You can call me a three-time loser,” is the way he puts it, but repeat offenders and recidivists are the official labels. After time locked up in state penitentiaries across California, Texas, and New York, the man he could have been is a decaying memory preserved by yellowed photographs. Once, many years ago, in 1973, he was known as Bob Grossi, winner of the first of that year’s 250cc National motocross races. He had a contract, earned prize money, and rode a Husqvarna bike. But that was then. Nearly four decades later, at 62, Grossi, Sr. no longer owns a motorcycle. He doesn’t even keep a drivers license.

During his most recent incarceration, Grossi, Sr. had back surgery, suffered two strokes, and was strangled by a younger inmate. An old knee injury still pained him, a memento from his racing days. With missing teeth, a failing liver, and a mental breakdown during his New York prison term, Grossi, Sr. had become the perfect picture of a man who is classified as elderly by the National Institute of Corrections. And an aging addict, at that.

Since Grossi, Sr. completed all four years of his latest sentence, no parole was required. His good fortune was a second chance that few senior ex-offenders can count on. Jim Crawford took him in, giving Grossi, Sr. a place to stay. At Crawford’s home in Dryden, N.Y., a white house with a short driveway just before the bridge over Upper Creek, Grossi had the opportunity to rebuild his life.

The Crawford family home where Grossi, Sr. lived after prison.

The Crawford family home where Grossi, Sr. lived after prison.

Crawford volunteers for a religious outreach group in Ithaca called Community Faith Partners. He first met Grossi through the organization’s Life ExChange program while visiting the local Tompkins County jail before Grossi went to state prison in 2006. Though Crawford has dedicated much of his life to helping ex-incarcerates, something about Grossi, Sr. was special. It wasn’t every day that Crawford invited an ex-offender to live with him and his wife. But, in spite of this added support and considerable devotion, he had little luck reforming Grossi, Sr.

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NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute