Aging Prisoners Make Up Fastest Growing Segment Of Nation's Prison Population

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA - DECEMBER 19: (Editorial Use Only) David Barnhill (L), a prisoner and member of the Gold Coats program, makes the bed for fellow prisoner Frank Fuller, age 66, at California Men's Colony prison on December 19, 2013 in San Luis Obispo, California. The Gold Coats is a volunteer care program where healthy prisoners care for elderly prisoners who either need general assistance with mobility and every day life or who also struggle with Alzheimer's and dementia. The program, the first of it's kind in the country, has existed for approximately 25 years. Fuller is serving a 35-years-to-life sentence; he has been incarcerated since 1990. He has been in the Gold Coats program for over six years. He says he is serving time for the murder of his third wife, who he says he shot with a rifle in a drunken rage after learning she had been having an affair with another man. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from serving five years in the Navy in the Vietnam War; he also has Hepatitis C. Fuller, who took shrapnel in his legs from a mortar round, says he held many different positions while fighting in Vietnam, including being a machine gunner; he says he still suffers occasional flash backs. He says has served one other sentence for murdering a man with a .45 caliber gun in a fight. Between Vietnam and prison, he says he worked in the oil fields and in manufacturing. Barnhill says he has volunteered with the Gold Coats program for "a few years." "I had been a pretty selfish guy most of my life," Barnhill continues, "I thought I had to avoid my emotional life at any means necessary, but about 6 years ago [the prison officials] encouraged me to confront that." (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)