"Our federal prisons are starting to resemble nursing homes surrounded with razor wire."

Harsh sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums, continue to have lasting consequences for inmates and the nation's prison system. Today, prisoners 50 and older represent the fastest-growing population in crowded federal correctional facilities, their ranks having swelled by 25 percent to nearly 31,000 from 2009 to 2013.

Some prisons have needed to set up geriatric wards, while others have effectively been turned into convalescent homes.

The aging of the prison population is driving health-care costs being borne by American taxpayers.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times.