Why Medical Parole is a Win for Everyone
By Eden Kinlock
While the passage of time may seem uniform for people like you and me, the experience of aging is anything but equal for incarcerated individuals. Behind the concrete walls and steel bars of America’s prisons, social isolation, sedentary lifestyles, and limited access to healthcare all contribute to accelerated aging and the rapid decline in health that accompanies it.
Keeping elderly and medically frail individuals in prison does not serve public safety or their personal rehabilitation. Incarcerated people are considered elderly from the age of 50.[1] Elderly individuals are the highest cost to incarcerate and the lowest risk to public safety.[2] Of the 33,000 people incarcerated in Michigan, nearly 9,000 are aged 50 or older.[3]
I recently had the opportunity to meet with lawmakers in Lansing, Michigan, to discuss medical parole programs. These provide an opportunity for release when continued incarceration no longer serves the purposes of punishment, and when the prison system cannot adequately manage chronic age-related medical needs.
Medically frail parole is a clinically driven solution to an evidence-based problem. In fact, it passed the Michigan legislature with bipartisan support back in 2019. However, due to unforeseen issues with the bill’s implementation, only one person has been granted parole in the past five years. FAMM is working with our state partners to pass small but sorely needed reforms to remedy these efficacy issues.
Senate Bill 599 (SB 599) would improve Michigan’s medically frail program by letting elderly people qualify for release to their homes and families. Currently, the law only allows release to a medical facility when someone is beyond the capacity of the Department of Corrections. This is a poor policy, because often the appropriate placement when someone is past medical treatment is with their families, not a medical center. Additionally, some nursing and rehabilitation placements will not take people directly from prison. Compassionate release laws should allow people to go home if home is a safe place where their loved ones can care for them.
Over the course of two days this May, I had the pleasure of meeting with 13 Michigan legislators to discuss SB 599. Our conversations naturally included the financial pragmatism of medical parole and how the bill’s technical amendments balance safety and justice. Amid unexpected discussions about medical ethics and dignified aging, we found common ground with even the toughest opponents of the bill.
Sitting down with Michigan lawmakers also gave us a chance to set the record straight — medical parole is not a “get out of jail free card.” SB 599 was crafted to succeed where Michigan’s previous medically frail legislation missed the mark. The Michigan Department of Corrections estimates that this bill will impact about 12 to 20 individuals a year over the span of 5 years. However, the cost of care for aging people in prison is between three and nine times more than for younger people.[4] The numbers may be small, but the importance of the reform should not be downplayed.
Our prisons were not designed to function as hospitals or nursing homes. The individuals eligible for parole under SB 599 have medical disabilities and disorders that result in a life expectancy of under 18 months, or otherwise prevent them from performing activities of daily living. This bill would provide elderly people with the level of community care that is appropriate for their age-related medical conditions.
Improving medically frail parole is a win for everyone. Corrections would be able to spend less financial and personnel resources on providing complex healthcare, and incarcerated individuals would have the chance to age with dignity and be with their loved ones in their time of greatest need.
Learn more about the need for compassionate release on our website.
Eden Kinlock is FAMM’s Policy Associate.
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[1] Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole, Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole — The Sentencing Project
[2] FAMM, The Older You Get: Why Incarcerating the Elderly Makes us Less Safe (2022), https://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/Aging-out-of-crime-FINAL.pdf.
[3] MDOC 2022 Statistical Report, https://www.michigan.gov/corrections/-/media/Project/Websites/corrections/Files/Statistical-Reports/Statistical-Reports/2022-Statistical-Report.pdf?rev=b94083fdd724482bb22ad8313c7cd21f&hash=F9A0B5CEEC68345FC439D09BD7D95430.
[4] Cyrus Ahalt, et al., Paying the Price: The Pressing Need for Quality, Cost, and Outcomes Data to Improve Correctional Health Care for Older Prisoners, 61 J. of the Am. Geriatrics Society 2013, 2014 (2013), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24219203/.
