Support 2025 Geriatric and Medical Parole, HB190 and HB311

As your constituent, I write to ask you to give a favorable report to HB 190 and HB 311, which the House Judiciary Committee will hear this week. These bills reduce mass incarceration, save taxpayers money, and make our criminal system more just—changes that are urgently needed.

HB 190—Geriatric and Medical Parole—would require the Maryland Parole Commission to consider a person’s age and health when determining whether to grant or deny parole. The age factor would apply to individuals who are at least 60 years old, have served at least 15 years of the sentence imposed, and are serving a parole-eligible sentence. These people have long ago aged out of crime, and are almost invariably very different people than they were when they committed their crimes. Their recidivism rates are extremely low.

The bill also revises the process for the Maryland Parole Commission to evaluate requests for medical parole. It would allow individuals with debilitating or incapacitating conditions more meaningful medical parole consideration. Not surprisingly, healthcare costs significantly increase for older prisoners. HB 311 would remove the governor from the medical parole process for those serving life sentences.  This bill corrects an oversight from a previous parole reform bill.

 The Justice Policy Institute estimates that Maryland imprisons approximately 3,000 people over age 50, and nearly 1,000 who are 60 or older. These people are overwhelmingly Black.  JPI also reports that people over 60 are paroled at a rate of only 28 percent—which contradicts everything we know about trends in criminal offending in older people. 

Some states estimate that it costs four times as much to care for older prisoners as younger ones. The aggregate costs will balloon in the future unless we take action now. Because people age out of crime by middle age, continuing to incarcerate them does not serve any counterbalancing public safety benefit. 

Current practice is expensive not only in terms of the monetary costs of incarceration but also because of the tremendous waste of human resources that occurs when we lock people up for decades because of crimes committed years earlier. Keeping people incarcerated for crimes they committed when young is particularly problematic. We know the brain does not reach maturity until a person is in their mid-twenties. 

For all these reasons, as your constituent I ask that you give a favorable report to HB 190 and HB 311.