I. Introduction
Dignity: a concept that several constitutions enshrine and our political and religious leaders often invoke.1The idea of dignity lies at the heart of numerous legal and ethical discussions.2 Our institutions and laws embrace, hail, and employ the concept to assess and establish our society’s ideals and practices.3In legal scholarship, however, dignity remains an amorphous term. Considering its vast cross-cultural use, dignity requires a clearer definition.4In the context of a criminal conviction, the loss of dignity necessarily accompanies an offender’s imprisonment.5In the prison environment, factors such as a lack of access to medical care, the excessive force of prison authorities, and unsanitary living conditions combine to drain offenders of their essential humanity.6 For an aging inmate, however, the unfair treatment is even more atrocious.7 Physical confinement and frequent inaccessibility to basic services such as medical treatment exacerbate the deterioration of elderly offenders’ health, while placing a further strain on physical or mental disabilities.8
In United States prisons, an estimated 200,000 people or more are serving sentences they will never outlive, including those lasting for longer than fifty years, life with or without parole, or death.9 Getting “tough on crime” has motivated these measures and is a culprit for its consequences.10 In the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers adopted these “tough-on-crime” policies, promoting the widespread use of extremely long sentences, including life without parole.11Indeed, one of the most foreseeable yet ignored consequences of these severe sentencing laws is the dramatic upsurge in the prison population through a steady accumulation of elderly prisoners.12The needs of this inflated and aging population far exceed what the physical capacity, staffing capabilities, and resource supplies of penitentiary institutions can offer.13The phenomenon of graying prisoners, coined as the “silver tsunami,” poses significant ethical, health, and economic challenges deserving keen scrutiny.14
With the acute risk of COVID-19 spreading rapidly in prisons, the current pandemic should further incentivize policymakers to consider ways to reduce incarceration, not just for the inmates’ sake, but also to safeguard prison staff and surrounding communities.15 Indeed, requests for compassionate release have increased exponentially since President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on March 13.16 Yet, the standards of eligibility have not been clarified to ensure a more systematic response to a growing number of pandemic-related requests for compassionate release. This note argues that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has accentuated ethical and fiscal concerns about imprisoning the elderly, compassionate release policies must be reformed so that they are granted to elderly, terminally ill, or disabled offenders for two principal reasons: (1) incarceration of these classes of elderly offenders fundamentally violates their dignity; and (2) incarceration of the elderly does not serve a retributive or utilitarian purpose.17
II. Compassionate Release in the United States
A. The Evolution of 18 U.S.C.A. § 3582(c)
Compassionate release refers to legislation under which medical and correctional administrators, parole boards, or courts grant early discharge from prison to people based on terminal illness, debilitating medical condition, and unique family caregiving responsibilities.18 For decades, the compassionate release provision of 18 U.S.C.A. § 3582(c) was rarely invoked and release was even more rarely granted. Even though a number of applicants may
have been able to provide a strong basis for early compassionate release, judges were unlikely to grant it.19 From 2013 to 2015, however, the BOP pronounced and promulgated rules for an expansion of compassionate release policies to include more classes of ill and non-violent elderly offenders.20 This pronouncement came in response to a Department of Justice (DOJ) report criticizing the BOP for “running an inefficient, ineffective system that neglected to adhere to reasonable deadlines, lacked clear standards for review, and failed to realize the abundant cost savings attendant to compassionate release.”21The BOP was attacked for unfairly denying inmates who should have been eligible for release.
Yet, even after the BOP’s expansion of compassionate release from 2013 to 2015, the process remained unduly burdensome.22 Until 2018, only the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could file “compassionate release motions”23 In light of this policy and many other unwarranted sentencing disparities, frequent calls to expand compassionate release policies continued.24 For example, in 2016, the Sentencing Commission suggested the expansion of non-medical elderly compassionate release to apply to inmates over the age of seventy years who served “at least ten years or 75 percent of his or her term of imprisonment, whichever is less.”25 In 2017, the members of the Appropriations Committee of the United States Congress called for the BOP to respond to the recommendations of the Sentencing Commission in order to implement additional compassionate release reforms.26 Finally, in 2018, a bipartisan coalition in Congress introduced the First Step Act, which sought to increase grants of compassionate release in order to close the gap in end-of-life outcomes between elderly citizens and prisoners.27The act sprung out of a variety of discussions taking place in political spaces (including a Congressional Hearings in 2022) that invoked ideals such as autonomy and dignity to justify the right of elderly prisoners to a decent quality of life.28The question remains whether this act has realized the ideals of autonomy and dignity it set forth to achieve.
While the First Step Act removed the BOP’s role as gatekeeper and authorized criminal defendants to petition courts directly, a controversial discretionary standard for determining compassionate release remained.29 Participation in the compassionate release process was limited to prisoners who could demonstrate sufficiently “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances warranting early release.30Consequently, judges had the power to ignore the categorical restraints of release, finding extraordinary and compelling circumstances based on what they deem fair, appropriate, and just and a case-by-case basis.31The statute’s language also requires that a defendant has “fully exhausted all administrative rights to appeal,” along with the “failure of the Bureau of Prisons to bring a motion on the defendant’s behalf,” or that 30 days have elapsed from “the receipt of such a request by the warden of the defendant’s facility,” whichever is earlier.32 However, one problem related to the exhaustion requirement is that courts have different conceptions of what exhaustion means, or if it is even required at all.33This has presented unique challenges for inmates who apply based on COVID-19-related concerns, as they understandably fear that the waiting period of 30 days to seek compassionate release is too great considering the contagious spread and especially deadly impact of the COVID-19 virus on the elderly, terminally ill, and those with additional underlying medical conditions.34Consequently, several arguments emerged as to how to deal with the exhaustion issue.35 For example, the case United States v. Brown, No. 18-cr-57-jdp, ECF No. 59 (W.D. Wis. Apr. 8, 2020) determined the exhaustion requirement could be waived because it was a claim processing rule rather than a jurisdictional precondition.36 Moreover, the language of Section 3582(c) does not make exhaustion a mandatory prerequisite to filing.37
III. The COVID-19 Pandemic has Magnified the Need for Compassionate Release
The pandemic prompted an influx of motions for release brought by federal prisoners, with multiple prisoners receiving relief based on COVID-19-related concerns and risks.38 United States v. McCoy was the first published decision on compassionate release to come out of the Fourth Circuit since the First Step Act’s enactment in 2018, which arrived just as the pandemic reached its peak.39 United States v. McCoy effectively ended sentence “stacking” for defendants who were convicted of robberies and accompanying firearms violations under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which meant that these defendants’ sentences would be dramatically shortened, sometimes by 30 years.40The ruling also allowed for courts to treat defendants’ formerly stacked sentences as an “extraordinary and compelling reason” to grant release.41 It also led district courts in the Fourth Circuit to determine that sentence disparities could not generally be considered extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting release.
The Sentencing Commission established three criteria that allow offenders to apply for release based on extraordinary and compelling reasons: (1) medical condition; (2) age; and (3) family circumstances.42 Additionally, offenders requesting release have generally fallen under one of three categories: they have (1) a pre-existing medical condition making them more vulnerable to COVID-19, (2) tested positive for COVID-19 or are already recovered, or (3) COVID-19-related concerns despite have already received vaccination or refusing to be vaccinated. Clearly, with respect to COVID-19, category (1): a defendant’s medical condition, has been and will continue to be a factor most frequently invoked to satisfy the extraordinary and compelling reasons standard.43
Since President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, federal courts have issued hundreds of decisions on motions to grant compassionate release.44 Hundreds more federal prisoners and staff members of the BOP have tested positive for COVID-19, and these are only confirmed cases.45 As the virus spread exponentially across the United States, concerns grew about the risk it posed to correctional facilities, especially for the elderly or those with medical conditions.46 A combination of unsanitary physical conditions, the inability to social distance because of overcrowded facilities, and limited access to medical care has made the virus especially prone to spreading.47 Some federal correctional institutions are taking drastic measures to contain the virus, including FCI Otisville in New York, where inmates were sent to quarantine in preparation for release to home confinement, which is the physical confinement of an offender to their house while wearing an electronic monitoring device, offering more freedom than imprisonment in an institution.48 Federal prisoners, prison authorities, and the BOP are considering ways to protect those who are part of the prison system from the virus, and the need for more robust and concrete compassionate release policies is growing more serious.49
The United States is on the verge of an explosion of geriatric prisoners, which generates a grave human rights issue.50This issue is only further accentuated by the coronavirus pandemic, which has further exposed the risks of elderly, terminally ill, or disabled prisoners, many of whom are or will soon become candidates for compassionate release. The dehumanization associated with “tough-on-crime” policies in the 1980s and 1990s now comes at a cost that is more apparent than ever.51The veil of fear mongering and tunnel vision to stop crime needs to be shed; compassionate release needs to become a more politically accountable mechanism that provides a burgeoning number of applying inmates fair review of their situation as a matter of necessity during the pandemic as well as progress for the future of our criminal justice system.52
IV. Defining Dignity
Human dignity has come to be accepted as a core principle in human rights jurisprudence, and the model of dignity seeks to create a robust safeguard for citizens, including those who are incarcerated.53While dignity lacks a clear definition in legal scholarship, there are five agreed upon conditions that constitute the dignity of person. Dignity has (1) universality (an ascription to every person); (2) inalienability (the non-contingent implication of one’s status as person); (3) unconditionality (a property requiring no performance or maintenance); and (4) overriding-ness (having priority in normative disputes).54Elderly prisoners are placed in inhumane prison conditions, suffering unsound, unreliable medical care, excessive force by prison authorities, a lack of sanitation, and other threats to their health, safety, and general well-being, which deny them basic human dignity.55
V. The Dignity of Elderly Offenders Requires Their Compassionate Release
The dignity of prisoners entails a right to compassionate release. In other words, the denial of compassionate release to eligible prisoners undermines their dignity. This is because (1) to deny compassionate release is to show disregard for the autonomy of the inmate, which violates their dignity; and (2) to deny compassionate release can humiliate and can even abuse terminally ill applicants, thereby violating their dignity.
Denying an elderly prisoner compassionate release also denies the autonomy, and hence the dignity, of that individual.56 Autonomy mediates dignity in two ways that make it relevant to dying and compassionate release: (1) when an individual loses their autonomy, they also lose their intrinsic sense of personhood, which is essential to their dignity; and (2) when an individual with a terminal illness loses their autonomy, they also lose self-determination and control over the dying process, which also clearly violates their dignity. Imprisonment accentuates these issues and destroys the individual’s autonomy. While terminal illness already causes the individual to lose a sense of personhood and self-determination, which are fundamental to their dignity, the denial of compassionate release to these individuals causes the complete loss of autonomy.
Finally, the denial of compassionate release humiliates the offender, therefore violating their dignity. Few would disagree that prison patients who have disabilities and terminal illness suffer from a myriad of complications comparable to many non-prisoners who suffer similar health issues, such as pain and loss of mobility or cognitive function. The denial of compassionate release to an eligible individual effectively calls the offender to account for his crimes while still displaying the vice of cruelty characteristic of the crime the offender himself committed.57 In other words, in the context of palliative care, we should not deny others what we would not deny ourselves.58The correctional duty should provide care for the individuals it detains, especially through securing their lives.59
VI. Objections to Compassionate Release Based on the Retributive and Utilitarian Theories of Punishment
The utilitarian and retributive theories have different critiques of the compassionate release policy. The retributivist view of dignity acknowledges the status of perpetrators as morally responsible autonomous agents functions as a way of upholding the dignity of wrongdoers. Dignity is the inherent and equal worth of every individual. As autonomous, self-legislating beings, people have their own aims and goals. Because there is a duty to respect people, the government should further people’s opportunities to make choices.
A retributivist may be able to integrate aspects of rehabilitation, incapacitation, and deterrence into their view of punishment. However, the proportionality of the punishment to the crime takes precedence, whether (or to the extent that) the penalty integrates rehabilitation, incapacitation, or deterrence. These concepts fall more seamlessly under the ideological umbrella of the utilitarian theory. For example, the utilitarian theory can use the deterrence to argue that punishment should reduce the likelihood that an offender or other potential offenders will commit a similar crime to the one being punished.60
The retributive theory views prison sentencing as a just punishment for the motives and role of the offender in committing a crime, as well as the harm it caused.61The retributivist theory assigns an “eye for an eye” value to sentencing, emphasizing the importance of the sentence’s proportionality to the moral responsibility of the offender for his crime. This theory sometimes borrows from the utilitarian theory by considering the individual characteristics of the offender and asking whether the punishment imposed will deter him from committing a future crime in addition to whether it is proportional to the crime committed.62 Sometimes, the rehabilitation of the offender may serve an important role in making the sentence proportional to the crime; for example, if an offender commits a drug-related crime, part of their punishment could include required visits to a drug rehabilitation clinic. Finally, incapacitation can align with retributivist goals; through the disablement or restriction of the offender’s liberty and movements, these restrictions fit the seriousness of the crime committed. For example, curfews or electronic monitoring can proportionately penalize the perpetrator of a drunk driving offense.
The utilitarian theory would conversely support the view that the rehabilitative treatment of an offender can reform and morally educate him, deterring the offender from committing future crimes and promoting not only his well-being, but the betterment of society when he reintegrates and becomes a productive member of his community. A utilitarian form of punishment may simply seek to prevent a particular person from committing another crime through incapacitation.
Compassionate release is consistent with both the utilitarian and retributive theories of punishment, despite the ways in which they might seem to conflict. How can compassionate release help satisfy the goals of retribution to mitigate the harm caused by his offense? When a prisoner is diagnosed with a terminal illness or reaches old age, the physical or mental limitations caused by their illness compounds with their incarceration, making their sentence disproportionate with their crime. A prisoner’s sentence may have been proportionate to his crime prior to his terminal illness, but once he is diagnosed, the additional constraints on his freedom make the sentence unfair and arbitrary. Something must give. For the punishment to be proportionate to the crime, two things can happen: either the prisoner recovers from their terminal illness, which is often impossible; or the prison absolves the offender of the duty to fulfill his sentence and grants him compassionate release.
Modern egalitarian interpretations of retribution maintain that punishment must value the dignity of the offender and victim when determining the “precise amount of suffering necessary to restore just distributions of the burdens of the law.”63 According to the retributive theory, the formulation of punishment should include consideration of the offender’s point of view. Moreover, retribution is grounded in perceptions of a punishment as fair. Conditions that render the sentence unfair may arise. For example, when an offender who serves a lengthy sentence ages, the retributivist value of punishment appears to deteriorate. In a prison ill-suited to meet the needs of the elderly inmates’ deteriorating health, the punishment quickly becomes too harsh to fit the crime. Our intuitions of justice and fairness do not align with the continued punishment of an offender whose advanced age causes him to suffer health, social, and daily care indignities. These indignities transform their prison experience into one that no longer remains proportional to the crime in the way it was on the day of sentencing.
The criminal justice system in the United States (and in other countries across the world) do not appear to share this modern interpretation of retributivism.64The current system in the United States consists of lengthy sentences that show little consideration for the offender, placing a strong emphasis on the crime and victim. Both a cultural stigma about incarceration and a lack of understanding as to how to accurately measure the proportionality of punishment are key factors motivating this impropriety. Prisons in the United States are ill-equipped to provide basic care to elderly offenders; therefore, their incarceration becomes disproportionate, unjust, and undignified. Compassionate release is also compatible with utilitarianism; indeed, utilitarian goals share a view toward promoting the future good by preventing offenses. Whether utilitarian punishment is achieved through rehabilitation, incapacitation, or deterrence, it differs from retribution in that it does not seem to satisfy a propensity to punish someone in proportion to their crime, sometimes independently of its usefulness. Modern egalitarian interpretations seem to align more with utilitarian principles in that they serve some aim beyond punishment for punishment’s sake. If a more modernized version of retribution, made more akin to utilitarianism, appears to harmonize more with the policy of compassionate release, then surely the utilitarian theory of punishment would not only be compatible with this policy, but in fact support it.
The justification for why this is so has less to do with the disproportionality of a prison sentence for a terminally ill prisoner (the primary aim of retribution is to penalize an offender in a way that is proportionate to his crime), and more to do with its inability to maximize good consequences, which is the primary aim of utilitarianism. If the aim of utilitarianism is to reform offenders to achieve the best outcome—a crimeless society—then the continued solitary confinement of a terminally ill offender would not help in reaching this outcome. The offender’s continued confinement presents a threat to his health and safety, and if punishment were truly dedicated to making the world more just and safer, preventing the harm of others and promoting a civilized community, then the incarceration of a terminally ill person seems antithetical to those goals. His continued incarceration also would not help to achieve the goals of deterrence, incapacitation, or rehabilitation. The offender’s deterrence and incapacitation are already ensured by the pain and immobilization that a terminal illness inflicts upon him; his rehabilitation is overthrown by a more pressing need to survive, or to at least live as painlessly as possible until death. Hence, compassionate release would better align with the goals of utilitarianism; prison sentences should be left to those who can fully participate in their sentence as punishable and/or reformable individuals; the terminally ill are better left outside of carceral settings to maximize good consequences and uphold the principles of a civilized community.
VIII. Conclusion
There are different views in legal scholarship of what dignity means, and each simultaneously reveals how complex and fragile it is. Nonetheless, it steers our principles and values; it impacts the way we view and behave toward others. Most importantly, dignity stops us from devaluing and diminishing lives that we may at first view as “less-than”, including prisoners. That is why compassionate release persists in countries like the United States; guided by our intuition of a shared, inherent dignity with prisoners, we find ourselves aspiring to at least offer relief and compassion, especially in the face of something as special and difficult as death. While retributivist and utilitarian theories of punishment may seem incongruent with compassionate release, they are compatible with the policy because a prisoner’s terminal illness would otherwise prevent their goals from being reached.
Compassionate release policy should empower policymakers to grant release based on several factors that are not grounded in theories of punishment. While the goal of punishment theory may be to justify its imposition, it does not provide justifications of its remission; hence, the onus is on those decisionmakers to understand the deeper ethical and practical issues at play; not only are the dangers of overcrowding, poor health, and the high costs of medical care made worse by the prospect of caring for terminally ill prisoners, but they also present serious ethical issues that would transgress the most important, inviolable quality of every person: their dignity.
While this note may present more questions than answers, it at least seeks to start the conversation, and even change the dominant attitude toward prisoners. To understand and improve the policy of compassionate release, we must understand why we want to be compassionate; why we want to release offenders from suffering. That starts with the recognition of their autonomy, humility, and dignity.
1Lilit Kazanchian, Features of Human Dignity in the Context of the Modern Philosophy of Law, 15 INST. PHIL. SOC. L. NAT’L ACAD. SCI. REPUBLIC ARMENIA. 147-152 (2020).
2Id. at 148.
3 David Turner, Understanding Human Dignity Edited by Christopher McCrudden Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013, 17 ECCLESIASTICAL L.JOUR. 364–367 (2015). 4Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 938 (2018) (discussing the evolution of compassionate release legislation).
5Id. at 942.
6Id. at 958.
7Id. at 960.
8 Amy B. Smoyer, Johanna E. Madera, & Kim M. Blankenship, Older Adults’ Lived Experience of Incarceration, 58:3 JOURN. EXPERIENCE OF INCARCERATION. 220-239 (2019).
9 Frank R. Baumgartner et al., Throwing Away the Key: The Unintended Consequences of “Tough-on-Crime” Laws, 19 PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS 1233–1246 (2021) (discussing the consequences of “Tough on Crime” laws on aging prisoners).
10 Id. at 116.
11Id. at 1223.
12 Id. at 939-55.
13Edward M. Kennedy, Prison Overcrowding: The Law’s Dilemma, 478 ANNALS AM. ACAD. POL. SOC. SCI. 113-22 (1985) (discussing the connection between “Tough on Crime” policies and overcrowding in prisons). 14 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 939 (2018).
15 Jennifer L. Barrow, Recidivism Reformation: Eliminating Drug Predicates, 135 HARV. L. REV. F. 418, 439 (2022) (discussing the disproportionate impact of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) on people of color and its imposition of significant costs on the federal justiciary and criminal justice system overall). 16 A prisoner’s dilemma: COVID-19 and motions for compassionate release, 2020 WL 2762836. 17 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 939 (2018).
18 A prisoner’s dilemma: COVID-19 and motions for compassionate release, 2020 WL 2762836. 19 Id.
20Rebecca Silber & Léon Digard, Tina Maschi, Brie Williams, & Jessi LaChance. A Question of Compassion: Medical Parole in New York State, VERA INST.JUST. 1 (2018).
21 Id. at 967.
22 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, The Time Is Ripe to Include Considerations of the Effects on Families and Communities of Excessively Long Sentences, 83 UMKC L. REV. 73 (2014).
23 18 U.S.C.A. § 3582 (West).
24 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 938 (2018).
25 U.S. SENTENCING COMM’N, 2016 AMENDMENTS TO THE SENTENCING GUIDELINES, POLICY STATEMENTS, AND OFFICIAL COMMENTARY 2 (2016).
26 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 985 (2018).
27 173 Am. Jur. Trials 1 (Originally published in 2022).
28 The First Step Act, the Pandemic, and Compassionate Release: What are the Next Steps for the Federal Bureau of Prisons?, Hearing on 18 U.S.C.A. § 3582(c) Before the Subcomm. On Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security and Committee on the Judiciary, 117thCong. 117-51 (2022).
29 Jessica L. Leach. When Compassion Meets the Law: Sentencing Disparities as Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons Warranting Compassionate Release, 14 ELON L.J. 287-308 (2021).
30 Id. at 289.
31 Id.
32 18 U.S.C.A. § 3582 (West).
33 A prisoner’s dilemma: COVID-19 and motions for compassionate release, 2020 WL 2762836. 34 Id.
35 Id.
36 Id.
37 United States v. Gonzalez, No. 18-CR-0232-TOR-15, 2020 WL 1536155 (E.D. Wash. Mar. 31, 2020) (finding prisoner had exhausted her remedies on a prior occasion several months before, which would satisfy current motion and order of release).
38 Jessica L. Leach. When Compassion Meets the Law: Sentencing Disparities as Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons Warranting Compassionate Release, 14 ELON L.J. 287-308 (2021).
39 Id. at 299.
40 Id. at 300.
41 Id.
42 Mirko Bagaric et. al., The Increased Exposure to Coronavirus (Covid-19) for Prisoners Justifies Early Release: And the Wider Implications of This for Sentencing-Reducing Most Prison Terms Due to the Harsh Incidental Consequences of Prison, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 121 (2021)
43 Id.
44 A prisoner’s dilemma: COVID-19 and motions for compassionate release, 2020 WL 2762836. 45 Id.
46 Id.
47 Id. at 143.
48 Newsletter to Federal Prisoners, Internal Memo Toughens Cares Act Home Confinement Standards (April 20, 2020), https://bit.ly/35k4cSA (last accessed April 21, 2020).
49 Mirko Bagaric et. al., The Increased Exposure to Coronavirus (Covid-19) for Prisoners Justifies Early Release: And the Wider Implications of This for Sentencing-Reducing Most Prison Terms Due to the Harsh Incidental Consequences of Prison, 48 Pepp. L. Rev. 121 (2021)
50 Frank R. Baumgartner et al., Throwing Away the Key: The Unintended Consequences of “Tough-on-Crime” Laws, 19 PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS 1233–1246 (2021).
51 Id. at 1244.
52 Siobhan A. O’Carroll, “Extraordinary and Compelling” Circumstances: Revisiting the Role of Compassionate Release in the Federal Criminal Justice System in the Wake of the First Step Act, 98 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1543 (2021) 53 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 938 (2018).
54 Stephen Riley & Gerhard Bos, Human Dignity, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013). 55 Id. at 966.
56 Andrea Rodríguez-Prat, Cristina Monforte-Royo, Josep Porta-Sales, Xavier Escribano, & Albert Balaguer, Patient Perspectives of Dignity, Autonomy and Control at the End of Life: Systematic Review and Meta-Ethnography, 11 PLOS ONE JOURN. 1-18 (2016).
57 Kathleen S. Messinger, Death with Dignity for the Seemingly Undignified: Denial of Aid in Dying in Prison, 109, J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY. 633-74. (discussing the evolution of philosophical ideas about how to treat dying prisoners).
58 Id.
59 Violet Handtke & Bretschneider Wiebke, Will I Stay or Can I Go? Assisted Suicide in Prison, 36, JOURN. PUB. HEALTH POL’Y. 67-72 (2015).
60 Id. at 67.
61 Id.
62 Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, Quelling the Silver Tsunami: Compassionate Release of Elderly Of enders, 79:5 OHIO ST. L.J. 938 (2018).
63 Id.
64 Id.
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