At age 85, her salt-and-pepper hair cropped short, and confined to a wheelchair, Helen Loheac looks like she could be anyone's grandmother.

Struggling to survive with failed kidneys, three times a week she is driven to a clinic for dialysis treatment. But unlike most dialysis patients, or most grandmothers, when Loheac leaves for treatment, her feet have to be shackled in order to protect society.

That's because for the last 17 years Loheac has been serving prison time at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Corona for conspiracy. Her role? She held some money for her son, which he later used in planning criminal activity. "I didn't know a blessed thing," Loheac said of her son's plans. The courts thought otherwise.

Since being in prison, Loheac's husband has died. She has a daughter living on the East Coast. One friend still comes to visit. "Everyone else is dead," said the octogenarian, who was denied parole.

Loheac's story illustrates a growing conundrum within the California prison system: What to do with an aging prison population?

According to the Older Women's League, by 2030 one-third of U.S. inmates will be 55 and over. In California, the number of geriatric prisoners has increased 350 percent in 10 years. The population of older prisoners continues to grow due to longer sentences, mandatory minimum sentencing laws and tighter parole policies.

California taxpayers are paying approximately $70,000 a year to house an elderly inmate. As medical care costs increase by age, the cost of keeping geriatric women in prison will increase the burden to taxpayers even though, as a general rule, people become less dangerous as they age, said the Older Women's League. Californians may be poised to pay the most money to keep its least dangerous inmates locked up.

No parole
Last month the Women and Criminal Justice Network, directed by St. Joseph of Carondelet Sister Suzanne Jabro, sponsored a day-long event at CIW. Some 76 women from the outside met with 96 inmates to address the issues of growing old in prison and the challenges women face to re-enter society.

Through small dialogue groups the women identified the challenges of re-entry like finding housing, transportation, financial support and medical care as elder women. They talked about the need for advocates to assist them and their desire for assistance to be reconciled with family members or even to apologize to their victims or victim family members.

However, throughout the day women expressed disappointment that most of them will never get the chance to face these challenges head on. The key issue, aging women prisoners asserted, is a California parole system structured to ensure that very few inmates with life at the end of their sentences (for example, 15 years to life) will ever be granted parole. No matter how hard they work at rehabilitation, expressing remorse for their crimes, and putting together an acceptable parole plan that includes housing and a job, most are denied parole repeatedly.

Freddie Aguirre, 59, has been at CIW for 25 years for second degree murder, having received a sentence of 15 years to life with the possibility of parole. Six times since 1989, she has been found suitable for parole by the Board of Parole Hearings; each time the governor has reversed the decision of the board based on the gravity of her crime.

"We stay on an emotional roller-coaster constantly," said Aguirre through tears. "We get to feeling hopeless."

Both of her parents passed away while she's been in prison. She wasn't able to attend their funerals.

Aguirre said she is frustrated that women inmates are not viewed differently from male prisoners. "They are lumping us into one big pile," said Aguirre. "They aren't looking at us as women. I understand there are a lot of dangerous men in prison."

Victims' viewpoints
The groups closest to the ears of the Board of Parole Hearings and the governor are those representing victims of crime. Crime Victims United of California and Crime Victims Action Alliance, both based in Sacramento, oppose the release of inmates who have been involved with murder and who have life at the end of their sentences.

Of life prisoners eligible for parole, up to four percent have been found by parole commissioners to be suitable for parole. The governor still retains the right to veto the parole of anyone with a life sentence. In 2004, of 207 people the Board of Parole Hearings granted approval to be paroled, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger allowed 72 of those to actually be paroled. In '05, he approved 35 of 179 grants; and in '06, 25 of 204 grants.

The Alliance asserts in its public report, "California's Parole Board Crisis," that "some of the inmates that have received grants are not suitable for release and cause a serious threat to society."

The Alliance urges the appointment of appointees to the parole board who have law enforcement backgrounds. They want the governor "to only appoint new commissioners with strong 'tough on crime' views and a seriousness in protecting public safety."

Public safety is essentially determined by the gravity of the crime and not by subsequent efforts of inmates to rehabilitate themselves while in prison. Yet victims of crime and their family members have various points of view on paroling inmates.

Aba Gayle, whose teenage daughter Catherine was murdered in 1980, said her life was destroyed for some eight years after her daughter's violent death. "I was very angry for a very long time," Gayle told The Tidings during a telephone interview.

Eventually she sought out a Christian church and started on what she describes as a path towards healing. "I got a deep inside knowing that we're all one. We're connected to every human being and we're connected to the God-spirit in each one of us, said Gayle. "Jesus came to teach us that we're only here for one purpose --- to love one another."

It led her to write a letter to the man who killed her daughter, Douglas Mickey, to say she had forgiven him. Eventually she traveled to San Quentin State Prison to meet him. Gayle came to believe in the sincerity of his remorse and his rehabilitation. As a result she is outspoken against the death penalty.

Gayle believes that inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of being paroled and who have demonstrated rehabilitation while in prison should be paroled.

"I believe in restorative justice. I don't think we change people by being cruel, and I think our prison system is unnecessarily cruel, and the sentences are too long," said Gayle. "Prisons should be places where people go to be healed, not to be punished. We should be teaching them skills. We should be helping them to be ready [to be paroled]."

Small hopes
Carol, who did not give her last name, has been at CIW for 23 years. A victim of domestic violence who one day killed her husband, Carol plea bargained for second degree murder. Her situation as a battered woman was not considered.

More than two decades in prison "wears you down --- your physical and emotional health," said Carol, 59. "You wish you were dead. This is a slow torture existence. This the only place that when a lifer dies, the other lifers envy her. She got out."

A former photo journalist, she went before the parole board in the mid 1990s and was denied. She called the experience "extreme emotional trauma" and was subsequently referred to see a psychiatrist. Despite years in prison aimed at rehabilitation, the board asked her to talk about her original crime, said Carol.

Currently she is petitioning the courts with a writ of habeas corpus to consider whether as a battered woman she should be released. She's awaiting a judge's response.

In the meantime she finds comfort in taking care of a small cat who wanders about the prison grounds. When it rains, Carol sits outside with an umbrella to cover her pet whom she named Paws. "She's my reason for going on," said Carol. "Someone to love and to love me back."