Research shows people often “age out” of crime, and health care costs are ballooning. But still, many states oppose releasing elderly prisoners.
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On Wednesday, the California Board of Parole Hearings voted to reevaluate its earlier decision to grant “elderly parole” to Gregory Vogelsang. The 57-year-old has served 27 years of what is essentially a life sentence for sexually assaulting young children.
The move comes amid a broader political backlash over a state law that allows some incarcerated people to become eligible for parole based on age and time served. The controversy first ignited last month around David Allen Funston, a 64-year-old convicted of sexual abuse of children. He was scheduled for release on elderly parole before authorities instead transferred him from state prison to a county jail, where he was arrested on newly revived charges tied to an alleged 1996 abuse case. Funston has pleaded not guilty.
The two cases have fueled bipartisan efforts to limit such releases under the California law, including proposals to raise the minimum age as high as 75 for some crimes, and to exclude people convicted of certain crimes against children from being considered for elderly parole.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has defended the law in broad strokes, but said Wednesday that he disagreed with the parole board’s decision in the Vogelsang and Funston cases, and was open to tighter scrutiny of the elderly parole system.
In California, elder parole began in 2014, when the state was under pressure to reduce its prison population after years of court intervention over unconstitutional conditions. The state is one of 23, plus the District of Columbia, with an elderly parole statute, according to a 2024 analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws have emerged partially in recognition that people often “age out” of crime as they get older, and partially as a response to the high medical costs and logistical challenges — like getting wheelchairs through a secure facility — that aging prisoners create.
This week, The Appeal offered a gutting example of how this can play out. When alarms sound in California prisons, older people may be ordered to drop to the floor or stand in place for up to an hour — a painful choice for someone with arthritis, plantar fasciitis and other mobility issues.
Back in 2014, California’s elder parole thresholds applied to people 60 and older who had served at least 25 years — in line with most other states with similar laws. In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers lowered the thresholds to 50-years-old and 20 years served in prison, as one of the lesser-noticed changes in a suite of progressive justice reforms.
Fifty years old may sound like an odd definition of “elderly” in a country where age 65 is generally considered the threshold for senior citizenship, but it reflects a growing consensus in scientific literature that incarcerated people age faster than the general public, a reality that extends far beyond California. Earlier this month, two New Orleans men who spent decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola described coming home with cancer, glaucoma, Hepatitis C and other illnesses — the accumulated toll, advocates say, from years of stress and deficient medical care. “Dudes, just get old and die in there, man,” one of the men, who goes by Wee, told The Lens.
In Louisiana, that reality has helped drive a different conversation than the one raging in California. While lawmakers in the Golden State debate whether old prisoners should have another shot at life, in Louisiana, some are pushing for releases that can lead to a more dignified death.
Louisiana state law allows for compassionate release of prisoners when a doctor says they have less than 60 days to live, but in many cases, by the time the state processes that paperwork, the person applying has already died in their cell, according to reporting this week by The Advocate. That has led to a legislative push to expand the window to those with 120 days left to live, and it has attracted support from an unlikely coalition of justice reform advocates, corrections officials and Catholic clergy.
Pennsylvania’s compassionate release law allows the release of people with less than one year to live, and has led to just 54 releases over the past 15 years, according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. A bill pending before the state Senate would extend release not just to dying prisoners, but to those with severe functional impairment, cognitive decline and chronic conditions needing intensive medical treatment, as well.
Lawmakers in New York, meanwhile, are weighing passage of an elderly parole law like the one in California. As proposed, it would allow people 55 and older who have served at least 15 years a chance to appear before the parole board. The effort comes alongside a February report by state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, which found that the share of older people behind bars has grown rapidly since the pandemic.
At this point, you might be wondering why a comptroller — the government version of an accountant — is releasing studies on the age of the state prison population. It’s not as odd as it might seem.
While mercy is often part of compassionate release and elder release conversations, cost is never far from the surface. Prisoners are the only people in the country who are constitutionally guaranteed medical treatment, and as they age, their healthcare costs become a massive liability for state governments. A Virginia Department of Corrections report from earlier this year found that 9% of people incarcerated there accounted for 86% of the total medical expenses in 2024, with aging cited as a key driver. Democratic lawmakers cited the high costs in passing a bill to expand the state parole board last month, with an eye on releasing more aging prisoners. Once released from prison, formerly incarcerated people typically become eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
But in Virginia, like in California, the fear of reoffense — even if statistically unlikely — creates profound resistance for these kinds of release efforts, regardless of cost savings. “Criminal justice is not cheap, and we’re not going to compromise the safety of our communities across the commonwealth of Virginia, our neighborhoods, our families,” Republican State Senator Mark Obenshain told Courthouse News.
In Texas, a similar safety-at-all-costs logic undergirds a little-known corner of the state’s legal system, where fear of reoffense keeps some people confined even after they have completed their sentences.
This week, the Houston Chronicle reported on the state’s civil commitment office, which holds people convicted of sex crimes when they are deemed to have a “mental abnormality” that makes their behavior uncontrollable. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed this kind of commitment in a 1997 decision.
The population is old by design, since all of those admitted are coming off long prison sentences, and unlike prisoners serving criminal sentences, those in civil commitment are not eligible for compassionate release. According to the Chronicle, the program spent $7.2 million on medical care in 2025 after budgeting just $1.8 million. Of the more than 700 men (and one woman) who have been admitted since the program began in 2015, only 30 have ever been released.
“They say it’s rehabilitation,” Gene Anthes, an Austin attorney, told the Chronicle. “But that’s bull. It’s an opportunity to lock them up and throw away the key.”
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.