Programs with names such as “medical parole” and “compassionate release” have allowed low-risk prisoners to get out early while shifting the cost burden to families or federal programs. State budgets have been hit hard as these prisoners get older and need treatment for serious diagnoses like cancer and heart disease (In 2012, Texas spent nearly $2 million on 10 particularly sick prisoners). Between 19, the number of state and federal inmates age 50 or older increased from 41,486 to 113,358. Across the country, laws passed a generation ago to increase sentences and limit parole have combined with the population bump of the baby boomer generation.

The question is particularly salient now as the federal Bureau of Prisons attempts to define who exactly counts as an “aging” prisoner. But a slow trickle of studies-including the one Bolano assisted with-have started to show that there is medical evidence behind the idea that at around age 50 prisoners start to contend with the health problems more often associated with people far older. In the early 1990s, a few officials suggested to the sociologist Ronald Aday that “the typical inmate in his fifties has a physical appearance of at least 10 years older.” That comment was cited widely by journalists and researchers, and a handful of mysteriously specific claims have floated around, saying prisoners over 50 have a health profile of people 11.5 years older.Īday says no studies have proven that prisoners age at a specific rate compared to those on the outside. Bolano would later describe his health profile as “typical for a man in his eighth decade.” The man was 57.įor years, corrections officials have spoken of prisoners who appear far older than their actual age. He laughed, telling her, “I can’t stand for more than 15 minutes.Sometimes walking hurts so much I get dizzy.” He also suffered from insomnia, regular falls, anxiety, and urinary incontinence.

Last year, Marielle Bolano, a student helping her professor research the health of aging inmates at a jail in San Francisco, asked one of them if he had trouble walking. Sign up for our newsletters to receive all of our stories and analysis.

The Marshall Project is a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. Justice Lab is a column that examines the science, social science and technology of criminal justice

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