Wisconsin Seeing an Aging Prison Population

Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 -- 11:01 AM

(Mackenzie Krumme, Wisconsin Public Radio) Growing old can be rough for anybody.

But, according to Mackenzie Krumme with Wisconsin Public Radio, people who are in prison feel it more acutely. “Somebody who’s 50 and has been incarcerated for many years has the same geriatric risks as somebody 15 or even 20 years older,” UW Health’s Dr. Farah Kaiksow told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”.

Anybody who has a significant stressor in their life can experience advanced biological aging, Kaiksow said, where the cells age faster than if they hadn’t experienced that stress. And there are few stressors that compare to living in prison.

On top of the stress of living in prison, incarcerated people have a much higher likelihood of having experienced significant trauma in their childhood, which can also exacerbate aging.

Wisconsin’s prison population is rapidly aging. The Wisconsin Policy Forum found in a new report that the incarceration rate of people in Wisconsin prisons over the age of 60 has doubled since 2010.

Using data from state agencies and publicly available state and federal sources, researchers said that in 2000 there were 330 people in Wisconsin’s state prisons who were age 60 and older.

By 2023 that number grew to 1,960. This poses serious challenges for the state in caring for a population that will have more needs and require more support. Kaiksow said that some people might require assistance for routine tasks like bathing, getting in and out of bunk beds or managing their medical care.

“The trends that we are seeing here in Wisconsin, we are seeing nationwide,” Kaiksow said. “All states in the country are dealing with these challenges.”

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