Aging in Prison: A look at nation's oldest inmate population

Apr. 2—COLDWATER — Five days a week, eight hours a day, office staff at Lakeland Corrections Facility work the phones, scheduling medical appointments for the 1,400 men incarcerated there who need to see a specialist.

Lakeland is a dormitory-style, lower security prison known within the Michigan Department of Corrections as a go-to facility to house and care for elderly men serving long sentences.

"We have 24 prisoners here over 80 years old," says Warden Bryan Morrison. "Their sentences can be 20, 30 years or more. Occasionally, you do get somebody that comes to prison later in life, at 60 or 70, but that's a rarity."

National data shows Michigan has the oldest prisoner population in the nation, said MDOC's Chris Gautz, and, just like on the outside, with age comes increasing health care costs.

In 2012, MDOC records show, the state spent an average of $6,611 per prisoner on health care; a decade later, that figure climbed to $9,219, though people in prison undergoing specialized treatment for cancer, heart disease, hepatitis C, stroke and dementia can incur costs of $200,000 and $300,000 or more per year.

"People say the price of cancer treatment is so expensive and (in prison) it's more than that," Morrison said. "It's staff time to take them to hospital to be treated. It's emergency rooms and an ambulance. It's extra medical staff and schedulers."

To critics of spending taxpayer money on care for people convicted of one or more crimes, Morrison points out the MDOC is obligated to provide this care.

The U.S. Constitution, as stated in a 1976 Supreme Court case, Estelle v. Gamble, requires prison officials to provide adequate medical care to people incarcerated in state and federal prisons.

Providing a purpose

Morrison said he feels a moral obligation to the men in Lakeland, especially the elderly.

"People ask how we deal with a population that's elderly and the big thing I tell them is, you have to push hope," Morrison said. "When you're 80 years old and you've been incarcerated for 55, maybe 60 years, you have to give them a purpose."

Lakeland installed raised garden beds that are wheelchair-accessible, offers elderly prisoners opportunities to interact with dogs being trained by younger prisoners, has a music program where people incarcerated can join bands, among other activities.

Sometimes, it is interactions between the old and the young that provide both with meaning.

"There's something to be said for a guy who's 80 years old, sitting on a bench talking to inmates who are 20, 30 years old, and saying, 'Learn from me, listen to me, don't do what I've done,'" Morrison said.

The rise in costs for health care, including mental health care, in Michigan prisons in the past 10 years corresponds with the increase in health care costs generally — and with the state's aging prison population, Gautz said.

In 2011, MDOC records show the 41 people incarcerated in the state were 80 years old or older.

Ten years later, in 2021, the latest year for which data is available, that number more than doubled, to 88.

About 5,700 of the state's incarcerated people are older than 50, MDOC records from 2021 show.

Dangers of COVID-19

This age statistic was particularly alarming to corrections officials during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gautz said, when masking and testing were mandatory at every prison and Lakeland was watched especially closely.

"We were nervous and worried that, if COVID got into that facility, it was going to do real harm because of that prison's population and, unfortunately, it did," Gautz said.

Twenty prisoners from Lakeland, most of them elderly, died of the disease and are now memorialized with a plaque, paid for with money from a prisoner benefit fund, installed in the prison's garden.

A study by the University of California, Covid Behind Bars, has since found 90 percent of those who died while incarcerated in Michigan prisons were 50 years old or older.

During the height of the pandemic, Gautz said, parole boards approved release for three out of four of those eligible, with age being one factor considered, as were criminal history, program participation and risk.

"For those who will hear that, or read that, and say, 'They were just throwing everyone out, they weren't thinking about public safety,' I would point out that our recidivism rate is the lowest in state history and is among the lowest in the nation," Gautz said.

Without revisiting sentencing laws, however, Gautz said the state cannot parole its way out of the increasing cost, both societal and economic, of incarcerating the elderly.

Truth in Sentencing laws

In 1998, the Michigan Legislature passed Truth in Sentencing laws which eliminated disciplinary credits, good time and corrections centers for certain offenders and require offenders to serve 100 percent of their minimum sentence in prison before being eligible for parole.

Since then, data shows there are fewer people in prison in Michigan, but the average sentences served by those who are have increased significantly.

In 2007, there were 51,554 people incarcerated in the state's prisons and the average cumulative term was 8.2 years.

In 2021, there were 32,186 people in prison in Michigan and the average cumulative minimum term was 12 years.

"Our prisoner population is aging, but it's not because we are choosing to keep them longer or choosing not to parole them," Gautz said, "A lot of these older prisoners were sent to us in the 1970s and 1980s when it was a 'get tough on crime, lock 'em up and throw away the key' mentality."

Some elderly prisoners were given long sentences after being convicted of violent crimes, such as murder, assault or armed robbery, Gautz said, while others have convictions for non-violent drug offenses.

Barring action by the Legislature, a commutation or a pardon, Gautz said the MDOC has no authority to parole many of its elderly prisoners with long sentences who he said are likely to die while incarcerated.

Gautz said he'd like to see the Legislature review the state's sentencing laws; Morrison said he would not be opposed to that.

"I'm not a legislator, I've never been one, I've never been a judge and those are two positions that I know very little about," Morrison said. "You can't just give a blanket statement like let them all go, or lock them all up. They're individuals."

Morrison did not name names, but did say he believes there are men incarcerated at Lakeland who should never be released and others who could be released without risk to the public, but because of their minimum sentences, might never be eligible for parole.

"Doing this for as long as I have, yeah, I think there's some people who could go home and, right now, it doesn't look like they ever will," Morrison said. "So I wouldn't have a problem looking again at some individuals. And at 20-plus years of knowing them, I think I would be a pretty good judge of character."

One release story

Jeff Titus, 71, incarcerated for more than two decades on a life without parole sentence, was released from Lakeland on Feb. 24, for murders the state now says he did not commit.

Titus in 2002 was convicted of fatally shooting two hunters in the Fulton State Game Area in the fall of 1990, despite having an alibi — court records show he was hunting with a friend nearly 30 miles away.

The University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, a popular true-crime podcast, "Undisclosed," local reporters and an ID Channel television series, "Killer in Question," separately took up Titus' cause.

U.S. Federal District Court Judge Paul D. Borman overturned Titus' conviction after an attorney with the Michigan Attorney General's office and attorneys with the Innocence Clinic filed a joint motion asking for Titus to be released and granted a new trial.

Staff with the AG's Conviction Integrity Unit located evidence not presented at Titus' trial, showing a serial killer, Thomas Dillon, previously convicted of murdering multiple hunters and outdoorsmen, was the likely culprit.

The file was located at the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office, and failure to turn the information over to Titus' defense attorney violated federal law.

"It changed my whole case," Titus told Grand Rapids' WOOD-TV. "The police had that file and they didn't do nothing with it!"

The AG's office said Titus will be eligible for re-entry housing and other MDOC resources, such as job training and placement, transportation, work clothes and tools, plus help obtaining vital documents.

Paroled at 70-plus

Morrison said he was in Texas at a training session the day Titus was released, adding that preparing older people who've served long sentences for release, whether via parole or court action, is more complex than most people understand.

Older parolees may not have paid in to Social Security for decades, if ever. They may not be physically capable of working. They may no longer have close family members — especially if family were victims of the crime for which they were convicted.

Those issues are "absolutely what we have to look into," Morrison said, adding that it's the facility's records office staff who do the legwork of securing housing and other resources.

A state House bill addressing ID for parolees, if passed, would require MDOC to do what Morrison said they already do at Lakeland.

"You're 70 to 80 years old. You're about to be released. And you may not even have a Social Security card. So we get them that," Morrison said. "I can't change who goes home, but what I can do is make sure that I've done, and my staff has done, everything we can to make sure they will be ready."