Pennsylvania’s compassionate release law couldn’t be further from compassionate.
Right now, the only way a person serving a life sentence without parole can be released for medical reasons is under a statute that requires a doctor to predict that the person will die within one year (Title 42 section 9777). Just being gravely ill won’t cut it, nor will cognitive incapacitation. Being so elderly they physically are incapable of being a threat to anyone? Forget about it! They must be close enough to death on an objective, made-up timeline for the law to allow mercy.
If they are not, they stay in prison—often in tremendous pain, receiving inadequate care and at an enormous cost to taxpayers—until they are legally close enough to dying.
That is not public safety. It is bureaucratic cruelty.
Pennsylvania almost never grants medical release. Since the statute was enacted in 2009, only 55 people have been released under it. That number does not reflect a lack of elderly or seriously ill people in our prisons, it only reflects how strict the law is. The statute is so restrictive that even people who are clearly incapacitated and harmless are forced to wait until death is imminent before courts have the authority to act. Even when death is imminent, the likelihood that someone is given compassionate release is low.
This month, lawmakers have a chance to fix that.
House Bill 150, currently sitting in the Appropriations Committee, would expand eligibility for medical release to include elderly and seriously ill incarcerated people who suffer from debilitating medical conditions, cognitive decline, or severe physical deterioration—even if they are not expected to die within the next year. In other words, it would allow courts to consider reality, not just a prognosis.
The reality is this: many people in Pennsylvania prisons are old, sick, and completely incapable of harming anyone.
Have you ever heard of an armed burglary committed by someone wheeling around an oxygen tank? Or a first-degree murder by an 80-year-old in a wheelchair with dementia? Forcing people like this to die in prison does not make our communities safer.
What it does do is waste taxpayer money. Incarcerating elderly people with serious medical needs can cost more than $100,000 per year per person. Because incarcerated people are not eligible for Medicaid, Pennsylvania taxpayers pay every dollar of that cost. Those are resources that could instead fund programs that actually reduce crime—employment initiatives, reentry support, and victim services.
I recently represented an 80-year-old man serving a life sentence at SCI Phoenix. He is no longer ambulatory. He suffers from late-stage kidney disease, dementia from a major neurocognitive disorder, and several other serious medical conditions. Prison doctors believe he has less than a year to live.
However, he did not develop these conditions overnight. For years, he was gravely ill, wheelchair-bound, and in cognitive decline. He posed no risk to the community. Still, the law required him to remain incarcerated until he was close enough to death for a court to act.
A Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge recently granted his petition for a medical transfer to a skilled nursing facility that can provide hospice care. That decision was humane, but the lengthy process that led there was not. It was heartbreaking to watch someone so clearly incapacitated forced to suffer behind prison walls simply because the statute demanded a ticking clock.
This man is in a wheelchair. He is cognitively impaired. He is dying. He was never a threat. Yet taxpayers paid for years of expensive prison medical care, all because Pennsylvania law leaves no room for common sense.
Some argue that people convicted of serious crimes deserve to die in prison, but that argument falls apart when examined closely. Allowing elderly and seriously ill people—who pose no danger—to spend their final years outside prison walls does not keep our communities safer. It does the opposite by redirecting limited resources to the healthcare of individuals who should be released rather than funding efforts that can actually decrease crime.
Other states are starting to lead the way; Delaware and Maryland have expanded their compassionate release laws to reflect age, illness, and incapacity—not just imminent death. Pennsylvania remains stuck in a framework that treats dying as the only acceptable reason for mercy.
House Bill 150 would not open the floodgates. Courts would still decide who qualifies and public safety would not be at risk in any way. What the bill would do is allow judges to consider whether continued incarceration serves any purpose at all, not just for the sake of the individual petitioning for compassionate release, but for the sake of lifting a burden on Pennsylvania taxpayers.
This is not a partisan issue. Fiscal responsibility, public safety, and basic human decency all point in the same direction. We cannot be indifferent to suffering.
Compassion should not require a death sentence. Pennsylvania can—and should—do better.
—Rebecca Langman, project manager for the firm, contributed to the preparation of this article.
Laurie Jubelirer is the owner of Jubelirer Law, and her law practice in Montgomery County is devoted to helping individuals facing criminal charges and violations of their civil rights. She is active in promoting criminal justice reform via writing and speaking, including appearances on podcasts and through her own podcast, “Voices of the System,” which recently launched in January 2026. She opened her law practice 13 years ago in 2013. Prior to opening the firm, she worked as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and as a Deputy Attorney General in the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. She is a staunch advocate for numerous incarcerated clients and an active member of Women Owned Law; the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Montgomery Bar Associations; and the Louis D. Brandeis Law Society.
