Missouri inmate Larry Burton, 66, has just one crime on his record, but it is as dark as dried blood.
“I’m in here for killing my wife,” the former St. Louis area engineer said in a prison visiting room.
“I’m not proud of it, but it was a shotgun,” he said. “She was asleep at night and never knew what hit her.”
That was in 1990, when Burton was 48. He got life plus 15 years and is now part of the nation’s growing population of aging prisoners with costly health-care needs.
As states and the federal government struggle to deal with the result of inmates serving more time, corrections experts seek solutions or at least ways to cope. One is the “Old Timer’s Unit” at Moberly Correctional Center. Burton is one of 22 prisoners there. The average age is 63.
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