Syntax, Newsletter of the Suffolk University English Department, Issue 15, Spring 2025

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Silver Tsunami or Silver Rush? Extracting Value from Elders

I examine how the United States finances elder care, arguing that the legal processes structuring elder care tend to widen economic inequality and divide the interests of lower-income people against each other along generational, gendered, and racialized lines. I begin with two case narratives drawn from my practice experience as a poverty lawyer for older adults. One narrative involves an elder homeowner, while the other involves an elder renter. Both face crises of unmet care needs, the threat of homelessness, and ultimately the outcome that many older people dread most: institutionalization in a nursing home. I use these narratives as a jumping off point to explain how lower-income elders become, effectively, commodities for health care and housing entities to extract profit from. I argue these stories are not exceptional, but typical, because they play out the logic of legal processes governing elder care. I examine the increasing privatization of Medicare, especially focusing on how Medicare Advantage plans convert age-related subsidies into profit, at an unjustifiable cost to elders, their caregivers, and taxpayers. Regarding elder homeowners in particular, I show how Medicaid law sets up a race between for-profit actors in the long-term care industry, on the one hand, and elders’ potential heirs, on the other, to see who can seize elders’ home equity before the other does. And regarding elder renters, I examine how even older people without assets present valuable age-related revenue streams for the housing and long-term care industries to extract. Lastly, I consider proposed legal reforms and find none of them satisfying, arguing the crisis of elder care in our increasingly unequal society requires transformation of underlying social conditions, rather than superficial reforms. However, using the framework of “non-reformist reforms,” I ultimately argue for a strategy of struggling for incremental reforms to help build solidarity and power among oppressed classes and point the way toward an end goal of decommodified housing and health care

Incentivizing Diversion

Jill, living with addiction and arrested with heroin, appears before a judge the day after her arrest. With the prosecutor’s agreement, the judge offers her entry into a treatment-based diversion program—a pathway that promises dismissal of the charge and no further court involvement. Diversion programs are designed to offer accused individuals an alternative to prosecution and punishment, aiming to avoid probation, incarceration, and collateral consequences. However, an analysis of state diversion statutes reveals structural flaws: burdensome requirements, limited protections of rights, and punitive measures that deter participation and undermine diversion’s potential.By creating statutory diversion programs as a tool to conserve judicial resources, address the root causes of crime, and reduce recidivism, legislatures intended to avoid a formal finding of guilt, preserve opportunities for employment, housing, and benefits, and address racial and socioeconomic disparities arising from over-policing and prosecution of minor offenses. Despite these goals, many diversion programs mirror traditional prosecution and punishment. Participants often face restrictive conditions, limited procedural rights, and harsh consequences for noncompliance—particularly if decisions about participation must be made immediately after arrest or arraignment. Diversion can feel coercive and punitive, especially when individuals are required to waive constitutional rights or cannot reenter the program after a violation. Some statutory schemes even penalize people for wanting to remain silent about past criminal acts.These structural deficiencies make diversion unattractive to many accused persons, particularly those who distrust the criminal adjudicative and sentencing systems or need more time or support to comply with program requirements. If diversion is to function as a meaningful alternative, legislatures must address these barriers and clearly differentiate diversion from traditional adjudication and sentencing.This Article draws on a national analysis of diversion statutes to recommend four legislative reforms: (1) allowing individuals to assert pretrial rights while still pursuing diversion; (2) preserving Fifth Amendment protections throughout diversion proceedings; (3) extending the window in which the accused may opt into diversion; and (4) offering second chances after a violation. Additional reforms—such as pre-arraignment diversion, automatic expungement or sealing, and procedural clarity—can further incentivize participation.Part I traces the development of legislative diversion and its role in addressing the complex roots of criminal behavior while serving state interests. Part II compares diversion and traditional adjudication and sentencing procedures and explores structural disincentives. Part III proposes legislative strategies to improve diversion’s accessibility and effectiveness.By removing statutory obstacles and enhancing procedural fairness, legislatures can transform diversion into a genuinely rehabilitative and restorative tool available to more persons by earning the trust of the people it is designed to serve

Measuring the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on Adolescents’ Self-Esteem and Self-Appraisal: How Can School-Based Interventions Help?

This paper explores the lasting impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on adolescents’ self-esteem and self-appraisal, with a focus on the role of school-based interventions in mitigating these effects. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) encompass various forms of trauma such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, neglect, and familial dysfunction during childhood. Due to adolescence being a critical period of identity formation and emotional development, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can significantly undermine adolescents\u27 self-esteem, leading to lasting negative effects. These effects include various emotional, social, and psychological challenges, ultimately changing one’s life trajectory. Based on numerous theoretical foundations, it is supported that school involvement and interventions can help mitigate some of these challenges and impacts. In terms of time and connections, school is a major aspect of a youth’s life, therefore if this time is spent helping build self-esteem and resilience in youth affected by ACEs, an extreme benefit can be seen in one’s post-traumatic growth. The importance of researching this topic is significant for several reasons. Overall, researching this topic helps to better understand the long-term effects of ACEs, improve adolescent mental health and development outcomes, foster positive school environments, as well as create early intervention and prevention