Reform that re-traumatizes: California’s elderly parole program burdens victims, frightens the community

David Allen Funston is serving three life sentences for sexually assaulting multiple children he lured into his car with candy in Sacramento County. Under California’s Elder Lifer Parole law, he was granted parole at a hearing and was released from prison in Chino — and rearrested on another charge.

This is not an anomaly. It is the statute working as written.

The same 2014 law that opened the door to Funston’s hearing is the law that has repeatedly forced the families of my father’s victims back into the parole process. It will give my father, serial killer Michael Bear Carson, a third parole hearing in three and a half years. My father and his wife were called the San Francisco Witch Killers after multiple deaths in the 1980s.

California’s elderly parole process started with a 2014 federal court order aimed at reducing prison overcrowding. The Legislature later codified it and expanded it to apply generally to inmates who are 50 and older and who’ve served at least 20 years of continuous incarceration.

It does not guarantee release. But it does mandate that cases be reopened based largely on age and time served.

That choice carries real consequences.

Most people serving life sentences are incarcerated for murder, rape, and child sexual abuse. These are not drug possession cases or technical violations. These are the most violent crimes in our system.

The Board of Parole Hearings reviews these inmates’ institutional behavior, participation in rehabilitation programs, psychological evaluations and overall public safety risk. 

Those safeguards matter. But eligibility is automatically triggered by age and time served — not by a prior showing that the individual’s risk has meaningfully changed.

The burden of that automatic trigger falls on victims’ families.

Each parole hearing requires notification, preparation and often in-person testimony. Families must revisit trial records, autopsy reports and impact statements. In serial cases, hearings can recur on a predictable schedule. 

The law may not guarantee release — but it guarantees repetition.

Automatically reopening these cases does little to reduce prison overcrowding. What it does is compel victims’ families to relive trauma again and again.

I do support effective prison reform. Mass incarceration was and remains a profound moral failure.

And the reasoning for elderly parole is understandable. Research shows that reoffending rates generally decline as people age. 

Older incarcerated individuals are more expensive to house and often have significant medical needs. California’s aging prison population presents real fiscal and humanitarian challenges that deserve thoughtful solutions.

But reforms must be targeted and evidence-based. An automatic age threshold should not apply equally to serial killers, serial child predators and individuals whose crimes were situational or driven by addiction. 

Age alone is not proof of reduced risk. Time served alone is not proof of rehabilitation.

Victim-centered reform should not treat repeated trauma as an unavoidable side effect. California does have other options. 

The state could expand its secure geriatric medical units and hospice care within its correctional facilities. It could strengthen compassionate release procedures for individuals who are medically incapacitated and demonstrably low risk. 

It could develop more refined risk assessment tools that distinguish between categories of violent crime, rather than assuming that age reduces risk in the same way for everyone.

And it could invest earlier in prevention, diversion programs, treatment access, and economic stability — where research shows there are the strongest long-term reductions in incarceration.

We shrink the prison population by preventing crime through economic stability, accessible treatment and effective diversion for nonviolent offenses — not by concentrating reform on a narrow group of long-term violent cases.

Public safety matters. Victims matter. Effective reform must protect both.