LOS ANGELES — Two women in their 80s have returned home to Los Angeles after spending decades incarcerated in California prisons, reuniting with family and community in a homecoming that advocates say underscores the need to end the prolonged imprisonment of elderly people who no longer pose a meaningful threat to public safety. The women were welcomed into one of A New Way of Life’s reentry homes during a surprise celebration organized by the nonprofit, according to a press release issued by the organization.
The women, whose identities are being withheld to preserve the surprise, will be greeted by family, friends, formerly incarcerated community members and ANWOL staff as they move into one of the organization’s reentry homes, the release stated. According to the release, the two women do not yet know a celebration awaits them.
The homecoming arrives just after the Fourth of July weekend, a timing ANWOL says highlights a broader failure in the criminal justice system: the continued incarceration of elderly people long after they pose any meaningful threat to public safety.
“Locking up 80-year-old women does not make us safer,” said Susan Burton, founder of A New Way of Life, according to the release. Burton added that the country should be “ashamed” of continuing to imprison elderly people for offenses committed generations earlier and called on lawmakers to pursue reform of the mass incarceration system.
According to the release, California houses one of the largest and oldest prison populations in the nation, with roughly one in five incarcerated people now 55 or older — a proportion that has grown steadily for decades. The release cited figures from the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office placing the average annual cost of incarcerating a person at approximately $127,800, a figure that rises significantly for older adults.
Data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, cited in the release, show health care costs alone reaching nearly $87,000 annually for incarcerated people in their 60s and close to $140,000 for those in their 70s. The release further noted that while people 60 and older make up about 14% of the prison population, they account for an estimated 27% of the system’s health care spending, with one analysis putting the total cost of incarcerating California’s roughly 740 elderly women alone at up to $300 million per year.
Despite this cost, the release pointed to state studies showing that older people released from prison are rearrested at rates far below the general population and quoted ANWOL Deputy Director Pamela Marshall, noting that fewer than 5% of people 60 and older return to prison within three years of release. Marshall said that many older returning residents face insufficient support once released and are unable to reenter the workforce or access adequate medical care.
The figures cited in the release track closely with a broader body of outside research on age and reoffending. A U.S. Sentencing Commission study found that offenders released at 65 or older were rearrested at a rate of just 13.4% over an eight-year period, compared with 67.6% for those released before age 21, with recidivism declining steadily at every age interval in between.
National data compiled by Justice in Aging similarly show that only about 4% of people older than 65 return to prison within three years, the lowest rate of any age group tracked. Criminologists describe this pattern as the “age-crime curve,” a well-documented decline in offending that researchers have linked to changes in impulsivity, social ties and physical capacity as people grow older, according to a review published in the journal Laws.
That body of research has increasingly shaped policy debates in several states weighing “second-look” or geriatric parole provisions, as lawmakers confront the gap between measured risk and sentencing systems built primarily around the severity of an original offense.
The release also drew a contrast with sentencing practices in countries such as Norway and Germany, where incarceration for even the most serious offenses, including homicide, rarely extends beyond 20 years, with release presumed once the state can no longer demonstrate that an individual remains a genuine danger.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
The article didn’t disclose what crimes these women were convicted of and since no names were given there is no way of looking it up.
Exactly why we don’t name people in stories like these.