The U.S. prison population is rapidly graying. Prisons aren't built for what's coming
When Andre Gay went to state prison in Pennsylvania in 1972, he was just 16 years old, sentenced to life without parole for murder and aggravated robbery.
"I was a kid when I came to jail," he says, "so I was basically a blank slate."
Gay learned from the older men there, whom he called his elders. They would hold classes together every day on all kinds of topics: politics, economics, religion, law.
Then he became an elder himself. There were some telltale signs of age — stiffness and pain in the joints, sciatica, flagging stamina — but he felt relatively healthy. For years, he saw his reflection only in a scratched-up metal mirror. One day, he caught a glimpse of himself in a real mirror.
"I literally did not recognize who I was looking at. I had changed so much. It was so disconcerting that it stayed in my head all this time," Gay says. "I didn't realize I had aged that much. I didn't realize I
