February 10, 2005: Number of older prisoners increasing

The Howard League for Penal Reform has warned that the prison system will have to deal with huge numbers of older prisoners. The number of prisoners over 60 has trebled in a decade.

In 1993 there were 450 sentenced prisoners aged 60 and over. By 2003 this number had increased to 1,440. According to the Howard League, at current numbers we could fill three prisons with old prisoners and if the older prisoner population continues to increase at the same rate 10 new prisons would be needed. Yet, the Prison Service only has four male prisons with small wings offering specialist facilities.

Older prisoners often have special needs including infirmities, complex health problems, lack of mobility; incontinence and some suffer from terminal illnesses. Pensioner prisoners mostly don’t work so they cannot earn money to buy small treats like mints or tobacco and they have nothing to do all day. Prison exercise is usually gym based with little access to outdoors, and even then warm clothing is not provided and there are no seats. 22% of deaths in prison from natural causes last year were people aged 60 or over and this is likely to increase significantly.

Howard League Director Frances Crook said:

“We are currently witnessing a prison system which is bursting at the seams and trying to cope with the consequences of overcrowding - it is not a rational use of resources to use prison as a high security nursing home. Continuing to imprison older people at this rate raises the spectre of the Prison Service having to take over whole cemeteries.”

Howard League Policy Committee Chair Professor David Wilson commented:

“No one is pretending that these elderly prisoners have not caused harm, but you have to think long and hard about what the point is of keeping the elderly in institutions designed for the young and in circumstances that merely hasten their deaths.”