by Victoria Law

This article was originally published in The Appeal.

After 34 years in prison, 67-year-old 1Cat Reed is suffering from sarcoidosis in the lungs, thyroid disease, sciatica, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, which she blames on decades of starchy prison food. When she entered prison in 1992, she was 33 years old and, as she puts it, in “pretty good health.” But years of starchy prison food, inadequate medical care, sleeping on flimsy mattresses atop metal bunks, and the general chaos and violence in prison have worsened her health. And she’s not the only one.

“We have seniors all over the prison,” she told The Appeal.

California has two women’s prisons, which incarcerate approximately 3,600 people. After decades of tough-on-crime policies, the state’s prison population is graying. Roughly one in five people in women’s prisons are over the age of 50. Although data from the prison system shows that recidivism rates decline with age, the state spends up to $300 million each year incarcerating approximately 740 elders in women’s prisons.

No Time to Wait, a new report by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the UC Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic, analyzes pathways for release, including commutations, compassionate release, medical release, resentencing, and parole. It recommends that the state utilize elderly parole and resentencing more expansively, allowing more aging people, particularly those sentenced during California’s tough-on-crime era, to be released.

Currently, those serving life without parole (LWOP) or death sentences are barred from many of these avenues. As of 2025, 173 people, including Reed, in California’s women’s prisons were serving LWOP. Seventeen were serving death sentences.

Outside prison, 50-year-olds are not considered elderly. But incarceration, with years of inadequate medical care, poor nutrition, and constant stress, chaos, and violence, accelerates biological aging. One public health study found that each year in prison can shorten life expectancy by two years. Every day, prison conditions exacerbate the normal conditions associated with aging.

Mindy entered prison in her early fifties. Several years later, she began experiencing back pains, which worsened with the everyday prison conditions. (Mindy asked that her full name not be published to avoid retaliation.)

“We all sleep on metal bunks that are akin to cookie sheets with pot holder mattresses,” Mindy, now 71, told The Appeal. “This creates back and hip problems that would not exist with something as simple as a mattress topper. We even offer to purchase them, but they say no.”

Mindy has suffered from back pain for the past 15 years. Six months ago, an X-ray revealed a lack of cartilage around her hip and degeneration of her spine, both of which make sleeping on a thin mattress even more painful.

“Aging in prison is cruel and unusual punishment!” Mindy said.

Prisons are legally required to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which mandates that they provide people with disabilities equal access to services, programs, and activities. In 1994, a group of prisoners with disabilities filed a class action lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), alleging that the agency had failed to comply with the ADA; a judge ruled in their favor and ordered CDCR to change its policies to ensure people with disabilities received equal treatment. CDCR remains under court supervision, and in 2020, a judge found that CDCR had violated the ADA and the court-ordered remedial plan by allowing correctional officers to retaliate against people who asked for disability accommodations.

Under CDCR regulations, elderly people can request several accommodations: a mobility vest, a lower bunk, a cell with handrails in the shower and toilet areas, and a senior card, which allows them extra bedding and the ability to walk the shortest distance from one unit to another. Still, these accommodations fail to offset the many problems of aging in prison.

“It’s not an assisted living place,” said Trinia Aguirre, who works in the 51-bed transitional care unit, a combination of palliative care and hospice. She has seen people lose the ability to care for themselves. She has seen them assigned to physically demanding jobs. “They’ve assigned 80-year-olds to the kitchen,” she told The Appeal.

Reed concurs, noting that, in the medical unit where she works, she has seen women in walkers and wheelchairs working as porters. According to the report, between 2020 and 2024, CDCR paid nearly $9.5 million in workers’ compensation benefits for injuries sustained by incarcerated workers aged 55 and older.

Mindy has a senior card, which technically allows her to have two mattresses, two pillows, and two blankets. When Mindy was chair of the Golden Girls, a group for aging women, she made copies of the prison’s operating procedure showing that members were allowed the extra bedding. “But when they do searches, some officers take them even if you have the paperwork on your bed,” she said.

“When extra bedding is taken, it does us no good to grieve it,” she said. “This last intensive search left some people without a mattress, blanket, or pillows.” Instead of filing a grievance, she says she turns to sympathetic staff or friends for help. Otherwise, she risks retaliation for complaining. “Any way they want to punish is backed up by co-workers,” she added.

Not everyone is issued a senior card. Andres Ivory-Hernandez, a 57-year-old trans man, says he has repeatedly requested one. He told The Appeal that prison officials and the Inmate Advisory Council have repeatedly said they would give him a card, but then fail to do so. Because he does not have a card, he says, “they exclude me from [senior events].”

In prison, when an alarm sounds, people must immediately drop to the ground or risk disciplinary action. According to both the report and women inside the prisons, alarms occur multiple times a day and typically last between 10 and 30 minutes, though some may last as long as 45 or 60 minutes. Because of her age, Mindy was given a mobility vest, which allows her to remain standing. But Mindy has plantar fasciitis and arthritis in her feet.“I can only stand for about 5 minutes before it becomes painful,” she said.

CDCR did not respond to requests for clarification on accommodations for aging people in custody.

After decades of tough-on-crime policies, including the 1994 Three Strikes Law, which doubled prison sentences for a second conviction and meted out a mandatory 25-to-life sentence for a third, California’s prison population is graying. The number of women over age 55 in California state prisons has more than doubled since 1999. In its March 2026 report to the state’s joint budget committee, CDCR noted that the number of people ages 55 and older in custody has tripled since 2010. Nearly 15 percent are unable to work and/or are in specialized medical beds.

And the problem is only getting worse. “While the overall prison population is projected to decline over the next five years, the proportion of incarcerated individuals in the focus population is expected to rise, as is the cost of housing and care for this group,” the report states.

In 2014, in response to a court order to reduce its prison population, California implemented an elderly parole program. People ages 60 and older became eligible for a parole hearing if they had been sentenced under the state’s Three Strikes Law and had served at least 25 years.

Six years later, in 2020, lawmakers enacted an elderly parole program, making people ages 50 and older who have served at least 20 years eligible for parole. But the law excludes those sentenced to death or life without parole, as well as those sentenced under the Three Strikes law.

By law, during elderly parole hearings, commissioners must consider the applicant’s age. But the law does not specify how much consideration to give to age, time served, or how they have spent their years behind bars. This makes results unpredictable: Commissioners may deny one person based on a history of fights and their lack of program participation. But they might also deny another applicant who has no record of violence during their decades in prison and has participated in dozens of programs.

The state’s elderly parole rates remain low. Between February 2014 and November 2025, the California Board of Parole Hearings has held more than 14,000 elderly parole hearings. Nearly three-quarters resulted in denials. Another 9,000 scheduled hearings were waived, postponed, or canceled.

According to the report, between 2019 and 2023, an average of 17 percent of the total elderly population in women’s prisons had a parole hearing. Those who were granted elderly parole represented just 2 percent of the total elderly population in those prisons.

In 2010, after 18 years in prison on a 15-to-life sentence, 62-year-old Betty Broderick became eligible for parole. By then, she had participated in and facilitated programs, such as battered women’s support groups, victim awareness, and, her favorite, Beyond Violence, a program which encompasses anger management, co-dependence, violent relationships, childhood trauma, remorse, and amends. She has worked as an ESL teacher, a literacy tutor, and an algebra and geometry teacher. “I broke it down, so everyone could actually understand it,” she told The Appeal, adding that she taught each student separately and often on her own time. “Everyone I helped passed the GED. I am very proud of that.”

She also noted that throughout her incarceration, she incurred no disciplinary violations, a significant achievement in an environment where even small acts, such as being late to a program or altering prison-issued clothes, can result in a ticket.

“I was sure I would be found suitable because I had done all the work. I gave them no reason to deny me,” she said.

Parole commissioners felt differently. They denied her parole, setting her next hearing for 15 years later.

She successfully petitioned to move the next hearing to 2017. After questioning her about her crime for over three hours, commissioners denied her parole and set her next hearing date for January 2032. By then, Broderick will be 84.

“I will not live to have another hearing. After two 15-year denials, why would I even bother going?” the 78-year-old told The Appeal.

“The Board has turned my 15-to-life conviction into the death penalty without any due process,” she said. “The Parole Board is retrying and resentencing you with every denial. That is not their function.”

Between 2012 and 2024, at least 92 women over the age of 50 have died in CDCR custody. At least three had been denied parole before their deaths. Two had served more than twenty years, making them eligible for elderly parole. Each died within one to six years of a parole denial and while awaiting their next hearing. Another died while awaiting her first hearing. According to CDCR’s own data, more than 98 percent of those released through elderly parole have remained free without any new convictions.

Mindy is serving life without parole and is thus ineligible for elderly parole. She applied for resentencing, but was denied. Now, her only hope is clemency, which she has applied for three times without response. Since taking office in 2019, Governor Newsom has granted 166 commutations and 271 pardons. In contrast, the previous governor, Jerry Brown, issued 246 commutations and more than 1,330 pardons between 2011 and 2018.

Whether they have been sentenced to life without parole, or await a parole hearing or clemency, aging people are at increasing risk of cognitive decline. “We have a lot of women in here, they can’t even tell you why they’re here,” said Reed, who works in the prison’s medical unit, which houses dozens of elderly and disabled women. “Prison is supposed to be the punishment, but if they can’t tell you why they’re in prison, what punishment is there?” 

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