Have you been to a nursing home or elderly care facility lately? If so, I hope that your experience was a pleasant one. However, more than likely, when you left the facility, you went home and immediately called your kids and advised them that when the time came for you to either: (a) be put in a nursing home or (b) just led to the back yard to be shot, you advised them of your weapon of choice. Many of our greatest fears include spending our final days in a nursing home away from our families.

How did we get to the point, as a society, where we have nicer facilities for retired race horses than we do for our senior citizens? Until recently, our elderly care facilities had gone virtually unchecked for many years. This negligence has led to some dangerous environments in which some of our seniors live. Our country has never shared the philosophy of some other countries whereby the elderly are placed in great regard. They are called on to share their experience and wisdom with families and cultures alike and are a vital part of the community. In the United States, however, it seems that we encourage people to retire at a younger age, so that we cam move them along to make way for the new breed or generation X.

Even more disturbing is how we allow the elderly, once we have pushed them out, to be placed in facilities where it is not uncommon for residents to be the victim of thefts, brutal beatings, rapes, and in some extreme cases --murder! A friend of mine is an *ombudsman* for the State of Georgia. If you are like me, you probably have no idea what a Senior Ombudsman might do. Neither did I until I became involved in crimes committed against the elderly. The ombudsman make visits to these facilities, announced and unannounced, to determine what quality of service is being offered to the residents in that facility. Matters such as hygiene, medicine, staff, and safety are common areas of their inspection. This keeps the facilities on their toes, as they try to avoid negative reports by volunteer inspectors. This is a terrific start to improving the situation in our geriatric care facilities. How can we, as the baby boomer generation and younger generation, sleep at night? There has been some progress legislatively over the last few years that attempts to protect our seniors. The most important one was making it mandatory for these facilities to run criminal background checks on potential staff members. Not surprising, most of the abuse suffered by residents came at the hands of the very care givers who were supposed to help them. This check prevents abusers and criminals from going from one facility to another, without the employer knowing why the employee left the last facility they worked at, or any other criminal past they may bring with them. Also, making crimes against the elderly a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature was a good first step toward protection. There is a joke among elder advocates that it if comes down to hitting your grandmother or your dog, you would be better off to slug granny. Some cruelty to animal charges carry a felony status, whereas elder abuse charges do not. This void in our criminal statues is an embarrassment and is disrespectful to our community of senior citizens. We take care of our parents and pray that our children will do the same for us. That is the way it works! However, the seniors are not waiting on us to help. They are mad and are coming out swinging with senior advocacy groups popping up everywhere. One thing these people know how to do is take care of themselves. The problem is that most of us do not want to think about issues that deal with the elderly. We think, or hope, that we will be young forever. In a younger phase of my life, I used to do a lot of public speaking to senior citizens groups and it was difficult for me to relate to the concerns and frustrations they felt with the criminal justice system. How old were these people? I still speak to those groups and not only do I understand and agree with their frustrations, I end every speech with this comment: *Save me a seat, I will be back in a couple of years sitting right beside you.*