Picture a prison yard in a Hollywood blockbuster. There’s a fenced-in field where young men lift weights and play basketball on a hot summer day. Correctional officers look on from a guard tower ready to sniff out any disturbance.In Oklahoma, a more accurate image might be a group of gray-haired men standing in a pill line or a dialysis patient struggling to get out of bed and use the restroom. Nearly one in six Oklahoma prisoners was 55 or older as of Dec. 31, according to Department of Corrections data. While the state has made progress in reducing its overall prison population, this demographic of aging inmates has doubled since 2009 and almost quadrupled since 2000. The elderly population, which is more prone to chronic health conditions than the general public, is stretching the state’s corrections budget and prompting officials to rethink core healthcare functions like medication delivery and medical appointment scheduling. Criminal justice reform advocates say there are methods to safely reduce the aging population, including requiring parole boards to consider a person’s age and health as a mitigating factor and making the post-release placement process more efficient. The Department of Corrections allocated $111 million for health services in its Fiscal Year 2025 budget, a 91% increase from the $58 million spent in 2015. Total state appropriations to the agency have increased about 15% over the past decade. The Legislature has also boosted funding to the University Hospitals Authority, which provides care to prisoners needing surgery or specialized care. The agency allocated $177.3 million, more than half of its total budget, to indigent and inmate care in FY 2025. In a January budget presentation, Department of Corrections Executive Director Stephen Harpe cited the aging population as one of the agency’s greatest challenges. He said officials will likely have to purchase a long-term care facility or convert existing space into a hardened medical unit to accommodate prisoners with chronic illnesses.  The agency’s goals for 2025 include expanding telehealth capability to reduce medical transports and contracting with an off-site pharmacy to pre-package medication and deliver it directly to prisoners. The agency spends nearly $2 million per month on prescription drugs for approximately 19,000 prisoners. “Care has gone up,” Harpe said, citing nurse recruitment efforts. “We’re able to see more people and have more appointments, and we measure all of those things. At the end of the day, it’s still difficult.”Legislative reforms aren’t workingThe Legislature has considered several proposals over the past decade to reduce the aging prison population. House Bill 2286, passed in 2018, authorized prisoners 60 or older convicted of nonviolent offenses to request parole after serving 10 years or one-third of their sentence. Three years later lawmakers enacted Senate Bill 320, which expanded the criteria for medical parole.The reforms have not translated to higher parole grant rates. Oklahoma Watch reported earlier this month that only six prisoners have been granted medical parole since Senate Bill 320 took effect in November 2021. About one in five prisoners convicted of a violent offense advanced past stage one of a two-part parole hearing in 2024. Nicole Porter, the senior director of advocacy at The Sentencing Project, said there are several reasons why expanding eligibility isn’t a catch-all solution. Appointed parole board members often face external pressure to not grant or recommend release to perceived public safety threats. The application process can be cumbersome without the help of an attorney or nonprofit group. Some states have tried to spur action by streamlining the residential placement process or requiring parole board members to assume that elderly or medically frail prisoners are not dangerous unless proven otherwise. Numerous studies have found that recidivism tends to decline as people age. “There’s some uncertainty right now, but given certain trends around declining state budgets and this increased aging population, maybe those circumstances will come together and create the conditions for lawmakers to think seriously about what should happen,” Porter said.Parole candidate ‘not the kid I was at 18’At age 19, Michael Gibson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole in 1969. He appeared on the Pardon and Parole Board’s docket 51 years later in November 2020 after completing an 18-month peer recovery support program. More than 50 people, including two former Pardon and Parole Board members and two former wardens at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center, submitted letters of support for the 70-year-old’s release. His sole misconduct in the 21st century was for putting a piece of cardboard in a cell door in 2012.“Today I am almost 70 years old, and not the kid I was at 18,” Gibson wrote to the board. “I feel sure that I have matured to the point that I am an excellent candidate for parole or commutation, as do many others who know me best.” The board declined to advance Gibson to a more comprehensive stage two hearing. He died at a hospital in Oklahoma City on Wednesday after battling a terminal illness. “If you can’t get that man through stage one, you’re going to have these old people in prison forever,” said Sue Hinton, a retired journalism professor and criminal justice reform advocate who regularly attends Pardon and Parole Board hearings. Hinton said parole board members are much more likely to recommend release if they speak directly with a prisoner or their designee, but that doesn’t always happen. The stage one hearing for prisoners convicted of a violent offense consists only of an initial application review. Those who are denied must wait three to five years to reapply.“I think we have some fine people on the parole board, but we’re asking a lot of them for very little pay,” she said. One bill moving through the Legislature, House Bill 1968 by Danny Williams, R-Seminole, would establish a full-time Pardon and Parole Board with three alternate members. Board members are currently classified as part-time state employees and expected to work an average of 10 hours per week. The proposal, which has a March 27 deadline to advance off the House floor, would cost about $673,000 per year to implement. During an Oct. 29 interim study on sentencing reform, Williams said lawmakers can and should do more to spur the release of elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners. “It doesn’t make any sense to keep really sick people that aren’t dangerous,” Williams said.Keaton Ross covers democracy and criminal justice for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at (405) 831-9753 or Kross@Oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_KeatonRoss. 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