by Robert H. Outman, CHCF, and Thomas Wynn
This new recurring segment is intended to give a platform to incarcerated elders. According to an ACLU report, up to 1/3 of the US prison population will be over 50 by 2030 if current trends continue.There’s a silent crisis that’s been going on in all the California state prisons dealing with the medical system and the elderly. They spent all these millions of dollars—billions of dollars—making additions to the prison satellite constructions and brand new facilities. Ironically, the elderly are the least likely to reoffend, but they keep these people in prison to fund the medical industry and to support the way they deal with the federal receiver. They’re spending all this money at the cost of these people’s lives when there’s elderly parole laws and compassionate releases. There is no compassion. If you walk by the medical clinic, or you walk by the medical hospitals, you rarely ever see young people in there. It’s all old people.
It gets harder for a person, the older they get in life (obviously). But it’s different when you live it. Even out here, just getting into a car for me is tough. Going up steps. So just imagine in prison, where it’s cold and metal and indifferent. Your needs are so different. Prison was not designed for old people, nor long sentences. The whole concept is just unbelievable. But that’s where we’ve evolved as a society. I really didn’t start feeling my pain and slowing down until my fifties but right now I get it I get it and no one really cares about these things of other people’s lives but they suffer.
About 15 years ago, Robert Outman and I started a group at Mule Creek State Prison called the Senior Affairs Committee. This was my birth in addressing elderly issues and ADA issues for the inside population. I think they really need a voice. —Thomas Wynn, Returning Citizen
In a dark 400-square-foot prison cell with eight prisoners packed in behind the locks, and 10 minutes into July 21, 2025, the Spectre of Death, impervious to locks, slipped through the darkness to seize the soul of 73-year-old prisoner Otton C.
Although locked up like a dangerous animal, Otton was a harmless old man needing the aid of a walker to navigate the prison, like so many other geriatrics waiting for their ignoble death in the prison night.
Otton’s 63-year-old buddy David N shared, with tears in his convict eyes, “Otton was not well. He was always in the hospital with heart problems, when he wasn’t suffering the harsh prison environment of bullying staff and prisoners.”
Otton’s death is not the exception, but the rule of benign old men being punished to death. For years, academics, forensic psychologists, legislators, courts, and penological experts have agreed and advised that geriatric prisoners are benign, least likely to recidivate, and most expensive to incarcerate. Humane laws are in place for Elderly Parole, Compassionate Release, and electronic monitoring for remote confinement. Otton had a loving wife and son at home, where he could have been humanely monitored.
However, CDCR refuses to use humane options for the aged, using the more brutal and costly appetite of punishing to death.
As dead geriatric prisoners find release in body bags, a cruel and perverse punishment bonus takes place: all other old diaper wearing, walker/wheelchair jockeys are reminded their number is one closer.
An insensitive course of action is always the same: pitiless guards and staff drag the body out to be bagged, an inventory is made of the dead geriatric’s meager property, and his bunk is readied for the next offering to the Spectre of Death. In a death, no guardian of the public trust is concerned over the PTSD/traumatized surviving elderly.
Although we are in the 21st century, 400 years ago Shakespeare could have well defined CDCR’s penal logic:
“O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.”
Beyond draconian punishment to death, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office reported in 2010 that housing geriatric prisoners is 2 to 3 times more expensive than housing younger ones (which already costs an approximate $127,000 per year). Calculating at 2 times, it costs taxpayers upwards of $254,000 for each harmless walker/wheelchair jockey.
“And men have lost their reason.”
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