It’s hard to find hope in a terminal illness. But for Darnell Price, the spread of a cancerous tumor opened the door for a new life. It was a chance to spend his remaining days outside of prison.
Two Wisconsin Department of Corrections doctors in 2023 projected Price would die within a year — one of several criteria by which prisoners may seek a shortened sentence due to an “extraordinary health condition,” a form of compassionate release.
That was only the first step. A Corrections committee next had to vet his application. Its approval would send Price’s application to the court that convicted him for charges related to a 2015 bank robbery.
Victims of the crime did not oppose an early release, and a judge granted Price’s petition. That allowed him to walk free in August 2023 after an eight-year stint behind bars.
Price beat the odds in multiple ways. He’s still alive in his native Milwaukee and has authored a memoir about his journey. That his application succeeded is nearly as remarkable as his survival.
Wisconsin grants few applicants compassionate release, leaving many severely ill inmates in short-staffed prisons that often struggle to meet health care needs.
Wisconsin courts approved just 53, or 11%, of 489 compassionate release petitions they received between January 2019 and June 2025 — about eight petitions a year, Corrections data show. Courts approved just five of 63 petitions filed in all of 2024.
That’s as the state’s adult prison population has swelled past 23,500, eclipsing the system’s built capacity. A growing share of those prisoners — 1 in 10 — are 60 or older with increasingly intense health care needs.
Increased use of compassionate release could help ease costs and crowding with minimal risks to public safety, prisoner advocates and legal experts say, but it remains off limits to a significant share of the prison population in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including those posing little threat to the public.
“The door is closed to so many people right at the very beginning,” said Mary Price, senior counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit advocate for criminal justice reform.
“There’s lots of good arguments why they ought to be released: They’re the most expensive people to incarcerate and the least likely to reoffend.”
Wisconsin’s aging prison population
Wisconsin’s struggle to care for its graying prison population has long drawn concern.
By 2014, Corrections counted more than 900 inmates over the age of 60, or about 4% of the overall population. Citing that number, then-department medical director James Greer wondered in a WPR interview:
“What’s that 900 (inmates) over 60 going to look like? It’s going to (be) 1,100? Is it going to be 1,200 in five years? And if so, how are (we) going to manage those in a correctional setting and keep them safe?”
Those projections undershot the trend. By the end of 2019, state prisons held more than 1,600 people older than 60. That number stood at 2,165 by the end of last year, nearly 10% of the population.
The state’s truth-in-sentencing law, which took effect in 2000, has helped drive that trend. It virtually eliminated parole for newly convicted offenders.
“Old law” prisoners sentenced before the change were eligible for release after serving 25% of their time. They were mandatorily released after serving two-thirds of their time.
Truth-in-sentencing required prisoners to serve 100% of their sentences plus post-release “extended supervision” of at least 25% of the original sentence. Parole remains available only to those sentenced before 2000.
The overhaul increased lockup time by nearly two years on average, said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University Law School professor and expert on criminal punishment. That likely contributed to the aging trend. Lengthened post-release supervision played an even bigger role, if indirectly.
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Separately, harsher sentencing for drunken driving also sent more people to prison.
Older prisoners need more health care
As prisoners age, they develop more complicated medical needs. Research is finding that the conditions of incarceration — overcrowding, lack of quality health care and psychological stress — accelerate those needs. Such conditions can shorten life expectancy by up to two years for every year behind bars, one study in New York state found.
“In Wisconsin overcrowding is a huge issue. Assigning more people to a room than they’re supposed to, which, of course, affects your sleep,” said Farah Kaiksow, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who has researched aging and care in prison.
The state has recognized the growing needs of older prisoners. In 2023, for instance, it opened a $7 million addition to the minimum-security Oakhill Correctional Institution that includes dozens of assisted living beds.
“Patients are helped with daily living tasks such as eating, dressing, hygiene, mobility, etc. Patients may be admitted for temporary rehab stays after injury or illness or longer-term stays due to age and frailty,” Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke said.
Hardtke also cited hospice programs at Dodge, Taycheedah and Oshkosh prisons.
But the department has struggled to recruit and retain competent medical staff. A Wisconsin Watch/New York Times investigation last year found nearly a third of the 60 prison staff physicians employed over a decade faced previous censure by a state medical board for an error or breach of ethics. Many faced lawsuits from inmates accusing them of serious errors that caused suffering or death.
That included a doctor whom Darnell Price sued for failing to order a biopsy on his growing tumor. She had surrendered her medical license in California after pleading guilty to a drug possession charge and no contest to a charge of prescription forgery.
Meanwhile, two Waupun Correctional Institution nurses are facing felony charges relating to deaths of two prisoners in their custody. One prisoner, 62-year-old Donald Maier, died in February 2024 from malnutrition and dehydration.
Compassionate release seen as cost saver
Advocates say boosting compassionate release could save taxpayer money in a state that spends more than its neighbors on incarceration. Health care tends to cost more for older prisoners.
Wisconsin lawmakers in the state’s most recent budget assumed that per prisoner health care costs will increase to $6,554 by 2026-27 — a fraction of the roughly $50,000 officials say it costs to incarcerate one person in Wisconsin.
The corrections department did not provide information breaking down health care costs by age. But a study of North Carolina’s prison system found that it spent about four times as much on health care for prisoners older than 50 compared to others. A 2012 ACLU report found it cost twice as much to incarcerate older prisoners nationally.
Most states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have some version of compassionate release, though they vary wildly.
Wisconsin offers two main avenues: one based on medical condition and the other based on age and time served. Over the last seven years, Wisconsin has been more likely to grant petitions for early release based on medical reasons.
State law bars compassionate release for old law prisoners convicted before 2000 — about 1,600 people today. Parole is their only option for early release, and the state parole commission has been releasing fewer people on parole in recent years.
That leaves out people like Carmen Cooper, 80, a wheelchair-bound inmate at Fox Lake Correctional Institution who struggles to breathe. He lives with Parkinson’s disease, recurrent cancer and other ongoing pain and says he doesn’t always receive proper medication.
Convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1993, he is not eligible for parole for another 12 years. He has submitted two compassionate release applications with doctors’ affidavits, but the timing and nature of his convictions ban him from such relief; state law categorically excludes people convicted of Class A or Class B felonies, the most serious types of crime.
Cooper has little hope of dying outside of prison.
His daughters Qumine Hunter and Carmen Cooper say the incarceration has left a wide gap. He has missed deaths of close family members and births of grandchildren and great-grandchildren he has not met. The sisters never stop looking for ways to bring him home.
“If we got five years, 10 years, two years, whatever years we got left with him, we want all of them,” Hunter said.
Renagh O’Leary, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, represents people in compassionate release hearings. She said several elements of the state’s process limit access, including that petitions first go to a Department of Corrections committee, which must include a social worker and can include health care representatives.
Committee members might ask for a person’s plan for housing or to explain minor infractions from time in prison. The petition advances to a judge only if the committee unanimously approves.
Sending petitions directly to the sentencing court would be fairer, O’Leary said. Those and other major changes to the process would require legislative action.
“We’re talking about how long someone should serve in prison,” she added, “and I think those questions are best answered in a public courtroom, in a transparent process by a judge in the county that imposed the original prison sentence.”
The courtroom is where crime victims can weigh in. Their opinions depend on individual circumstances, said Amy Brown, the longtime director of victim services at the Dane County District Attorney’s Office.
“Victims don’t all fall into one category, just like offenders don’t all fall into one category,” she said.
Another wrinkle in Wisconsin’s compassionate release system: Doctors must attest to prisoners having less than six to 12 months to live. Some doctors feel uncomfortable making such a prediction.
“It’s really hard for a doctor to say, ‘Yeah, he’s going to be dead in six months,’” said Michele DiTomas, hospice medical director for the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. “You just don’t know. Some people will be dead in three months, some people will go on for 18 months.”
California a compassionate release model
California offers a different model for sick and dying prisoners.
The 17-bed hospice unit DiTomas runs, the first of its kind in the U.S., offers dying men as much comfort as can be found within a prison: medications that ease pain, visits from family members, time outdoors and attention from other incarcerated men who have been trained to provide hospice care. That hasn’t stopped DiTomas from working to get people approved for compassionate release so they can finish their lives at home.
California’s compassionate release process used to require a string of signatures — from the corrections secretary, the parole board, the governor and the original sentencing court — and often took longer than a person had left to live, she said. Similar barriers exist in many states.
The state a decade ago approved about 10 applications on average each year, DiTomas said, with approvals taking four to six months. A legislative overhaul streamlined the process. The state now approves about 100 compassionate release applications a year, taking as little as four weeks each, DiTomas said.
The changes resulted from leaders’ collaboration after recognizing that the previous system wasn’t working.
“We can give people their humanity and preserve public safety,” DiTomas said. “It’s not necessarily one or the other.”
Housing shortage complicates release
Price initially lacked a place to stay while applying for compassionate release in 2023. It was his job to fix that or risk dooming his application.
“They can deny you for not having a solid plan for housing, but it’s not something they help you with,” he said.
He found a room in a transitional housing unit in Milwaukee through a faith-based organization. Had he required more intensive care, a nursing home may be a better option. But many nursing homes don’t accept someone fresh out of prison — a challenge described in a 2020 Legislative Audit Bureau report.
Wisconsin faces a wide shortage of affordable senior care beds, let alone for people with a criminal record.
That’s a problem nationwide, said Price, the Families Against Mandatory Minimums attorney. As more than 60,000 people aged 50 or older leave prison each year, housing demand continues to outpace supply. Her organization is creating a clearinghouse to help match prisoners who qualify for compassionate release with pro bono lawyers to help them find beds.
O’Leary said that illustrates how expanding compassionate release in Wisconsin would require more post-prison housing options.
Life on the outside
Price now lives in a modest efficiency apartment on Milwaukee’s north side. It doesn’t have much, he said, but it has everything he needs, including a laptop and smart TV to watch Packers highlights. On his wall hangs a framed version of the Wisconsin Watch/New York Times story that detailed his struggle to receive medical care in prison — a gift from his attorneys. The tumors still lurk in his body, though for now they do not seem to be growing.
Price has faced some of his toughest challenges since leaving prison.
The opioids doctors prescribed to ease his pain triggered a past cocaine addiction, Price said, and drug use cost him the first place he stayed.
But Price checked into a treatment facility in February 2024. He managed to stay sober in 24-hour increments. The days eventually turned into weeks.
“At that time I didn’t have a plan. But in treatment, I started feeling better and better until finally, the lights started coming back,” he said. “Then there came a point that I even wanted to go back to that life.”
Kyesha Felts, with whom Price shares a daughter, is also taking life one day at a time, enjoying the time she gets to spend with the man she has loved for 30 years.
“I love it,” she said of Price being home. “I’m enjoying every minute of it. Because tomorrow’s promised to nobody.”
She said she admires his intelligence, the way he treats people and his strength and resilience.
Price is now eight months sober, and he’s proud of the memoir he published, “The Ultimate Betrayal,” a chronicle of addiction, incarceration and redemption. He tells his story around the community. He doesn’t hold anything back, he said, because it’s all part of his testimony.
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
