When Virginia abolished parole to great fanfare in 1995, a safety valve of sorts was put in place:
“Geriatric release.”
That is, inmates 60 and older are considered annually for release, regardless of their sentence, so long as they have been behind bars for at least 10 years. They are considered for release at age 65 if they have served at least five years. Even those serving life sentences have a chance, save for those convicted of capital murder.
But the Virginia Parole Board has only sparingly granted geriatric releases in the past two decades.
Of the 1,417 cases that the board considered between January 2014 and March 2017, they released the inmate only 68 times. That’s a grant rate of 4.7 percent.
Adrianne L. Bennett, the Virginia Parole Board’s newly hired chairwoman, said that because of a burgeoning population of elderly prisoners, many younger inmates are serving their prison time in city, county and regional jails scattered across the state. The problem with that, she said, is that state prisons in Virginia are known for quality inmate programs that some credit for keeping down the state’s recidivism rate.
“You’ve got people spending two or three years in a local jail because our prisons are now stuffed with old men taking up bed space,” Bennett said. “So we’ve got these young offenders — who are more likely to recidivate than old men whose criminal history is long gone — being released back into the community with no programming.”
Bennett, appointed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe in January to lead the five-member Parole Board, said it’s time to consider geriatric release as a possible way to alleviate the problem. In other words, release more of the older inmates to make room for younger ones. Though only 580 such cases were before the board in 2016, Bennett said, the number of inmates eligible for geriatric release will balloon dramatically going forward.
“Do we keep somebody warehoused who is no longer a threat to the community and has already served decades in prison?” she asked. “A 60-year-old in prison or a 70-year-old in prison who committed an offense decades ago is a huge tax liability and is not making our community safer. We are warehousing old men who are no longer a threat. In fact, what it’s doing is making our communities less safe.”
That thinking is in line with a recent recommendation in the final report of the Governor’s Commission on Parole Review, released in December 2015. Though that panel found no appetite for bringing back parole in Virginia, it recommended key changes that could have an impact. Among them: Telling the Parole Board to amend its policies to create “more equity and fairness” on geriatric release.
As a result of stiff prison sentences and people living longer these days, Virginia’s inmate population is growing long in the tooth. In 1990, 822 inmates — or 4.5 percent of the total prisoner population — were older than 50, the Virginia Department of Corrections said. By 2015, that jumped to 7,607 inmates, or 20 percent of the total.
In 2015, a Department of Corrections PowerPoint presentation to the parole reform commission said there were 38,287 “state responsible” inmates in Virginia — or people who are supposed to be at state prisons. But more than 22 percent of them, or 8,414, were being held at local jails instead.
When the Hampton Roads Regional Jail was facing intense scrutiny over jail deaths last year, its interim superintendent, then-Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe, routinely complained about the large number of state inmates being kept at the 1,100-inmate Portsmouth facility. McCabe pressed the issue with the state. In March, the jail was down to 157 state inmates, down from 254 a year ago, said Linda Bryant, the regional jail’s assistant superintendent.
Spiking health care costs for older inmates is also an issue in the prison system.
The Department of Corrections’ PowerPoint said that off-site medical care for prisoners increases sharply with age. And that’s significant, since medical care is now a sixth of the state prison system’s total budget.
“Some geriatric prisoners require levels of medical care equivalent to that offered in assisted living, nursing homes or hospice care,” the governor’s commission report said. “These expenses are likely to increase.” For example, inmates 60 and older accounted for only 9 percent of state inmates 2015 — but 22 percent of the $57 million bill for “off-site” medical care.
But Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell, for one, cautioned against any making any rash judgments that older people aren’t likely to commit crimes.
“I prosecuted people in their 60s for being a child molester and doing other things,” he said. “The fact that you’re older doesn’t mean you’re incapable of committing crime. If you have an evil heart or evil intent, it doesn’t matter how old you are. That’s just who you are.”
“Everything depends on a case-by-case basis,” Bell added. “It depends on their history, prior to the crime they committed. What is the likelihood of re-offending? … Because what happens to the next victim that we could have prevented? That family member is not going to want to hear that they served decades in prison so they should be getting out — or that the prison system is stuffed with inmates who are older so we should make room for the younger ones.”
Dujardin can be reached by phone at 757-247-4749
