Research on people in prison tends to focus on the negative aspects of incarceration, and rightly so as few would deny that incarceration is largely a negative experience. Studies of ageing likewise amass evidence that the process of ageing is challenging, if not necessarily and uniformly aversive. These two social realities – imprisonment and ageing – merge where a relatively small but growing subgroup of the population is concerned – older people in prison. We have hardly heard from this group.

The prison population is ageing at a concerning rate in the United States and other countries including England, Wales, Scotland, and Japan (Penal Reform International, 2021). In the US, from 1999 to 2016, the number of persons aged 55 and older in state and federal prisons grew by a remarkable 280 per cent while the number of their younger counterparts increased by just 3 per cent (McKillop and Boucher, 2018). Analysts project that by the year 2030, as many as one in three people in US prisons will be 50 years of age or older (Nellis, 2022).

Several factors appear to explain these increases. They reflect a rise in new admissions for serious crime as well as sentencing laws enacted in the past several decades, including laws requiring lengthy and determinate sentences for violent offences and substance abuse. The increases can also be traced to the abolition of parole in some states. Whatever sentencing reforms have recently been implemented, past and present structures have had the inevitable effect of warehousing large numbers of older people, many of whom face long sentences.

People who are incarcerated, like their mainstream counterparts, are prone to more physical problems as they age. Compared with young people in prison, older people who are incarcerated are more susceptible to both minor and chronic physical illnesses and suffer from higher levels of mental illness (Davoren et al, 2015; Haesen et al, 2019; Solares et al, 2020). They are at higher risk of contracting urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal infections, hepatitis, and pneumonia (Falter, 1999; Aday, 2003) and higher frequency of use of medical services (Lindquist and Lindquist, 1999). Compared with older people outside of prison, those who are incarcerated are disproportionately affected by inadequate medical care, past and present, and by prior alcohol and drug abuse (Rikard and Rosenberg, 2007).

Notwithstanding these gloomy findings, ageing also yields positive outcomes.