What Older Prisoners Teach Us About Care and Justice in An Aging World

Authors

  • Jason Danely Oxford Brookes University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2022.395

Keywords:

Older Prisoners, Incarceration, Confinement, Justice, Ethnography

Abstract

Over the last two decades, there has been a rapid rise in the proportion of older adults in prisons across the world. While the cause for this trend depends on local demographic, legal and social circumstances, ethnographic attention to this issue remains sparse. This commentary examines the contributions of two recent books on older adults in prisons in order to highlight key questions and findings that might provide a foundation for future research for the anthropology of aging and the life course. Despite focusing on different national contexts, both works reveal the disproportionate harm to older adults as a result of incarceration, as well as the ways individuals cope, even in very restrictive institutional environments. I conclude by stressing the need for more ethnographic attention to the growing overlap between aging and the carceral (in and out of prisons), and the importance of this research for questioning our broader assumptions about aging, care, crime and justice.

Author Biography

Jason Danely, Oxford Brookes University

Reader in Anthropology

Chair Healthy Ageing and Care Network

References

Aday, Ron H. 2003. Aging in Prisons Crisis in American Corrections. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press.

Austin, James, John Irwin and Patricia L. Hardyman. 2001. “Exploring the Needs and Risks of the Returning Prisoner Population.” The Urban Institute: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Badone, Ellen. 2021. From Cruddiness to Catastrophe: COVID-19 and Long-Term Care in Ontario. Medical Anthropology 40(5): 389-403. DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2021.1927023.

Crawley, Elaine. 2005. “Institutional Thoughtlessness in Prisons and Its Impacts on the Day-to-Day Prison Lives of Elderly Men.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21 (4): 350–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986205282018.

Davis, Angela. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press.

Death Penalty Information Center. 2020. “Case of 79-Year-Old Ohio Death-Row Prisoner with Dementia Highlights Legal Issues Exacerbated by the Aging of Death Row.” April 21, 2020. Accessed February 28, 2022. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/case-of-79-year-old-ohio-death-row-prisoner-with-dementia-highlights-legal-issues-exacerbated-by-the-aging-of-death-row.

Fassin, Didier. 2017. Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Fellner, Jamie, and Patrick Vinck. 2012. Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United States. New York: Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/usprisons0112webwcover_0.pdf.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2022. Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Edited by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano. London: Verso.

Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Humblet, Diete. 2021. The Older Prisoner. London: Palgrave McMillan.

Ichimiya Shunsuke. 2020. “‘More than 10 Per Cent of Those Entering Prison Have “Likely Dementia.’” Mainichi Shinbun. June 27, 2020. Accessed Feb 28, 2022. https://mainichi.jp/articles/20200627/k00/00m/040/159000c.

Maschi, Tina and Keith Morgan. 2020. Aging Behind Prison Walls: Studies in Trauma and Resilience. New York: Columbia University Press.

Maschi, Tina, Deborah Viola, and Fei Sun. 2013. “The High Cost of the International Aging Prisoner Crisis: Well-Being as the Common Denominator for Action.” The Gerontologist 53 (4): 543–54. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gns125.

Myerhoff, Barbara G. 1980. Number Our Days. New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster.

NHK. 2019. “Keimusho, Marude Kaigo Shisetsu ni. NHK Seiji Magajin.” August 21, 2019. Accessed February 28, 2022. https://www.nhk.or.jp/politics/articles/feature/21325.html.

Prisons & Probation Ombudsman. 2017. “Older Prisoners. London: Prisons & Probation Ombudsman.” https://www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/learning-from-ppo-investigations-older-prisoners/r/a110f00000NeHLdAAN.

Rhodes, Lorna A. 2004. Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Shange, Savannah. 2019. Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco. Illustrated edition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

Tronto, Joan C. 2020. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge.

Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham NC: Duke University Press Books.

Yagi Takuro. 2020. “Senior Citizen Crime: 10 Fold Increase in 30 years, 2020 Police White Paper.” Asahi Digital. July 22, 2020. Accessed Feb 28, 2022. https://digital.asahi.com/articles/DA3S14558185.html?iref=pc_ss_date_article

Downloads

Published

2022-03-28

Issue

Vol. 43 No. 1 (2022)

Section

Commentaries

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.