In the shadow: elderly people in prison

Set within the background of Italy’s penal system this contribution provides a critical introduction to the international debates associated with the increasing incarceration of elderly offenders. At European level there are not comparable data as the definition of ‘older prisoner’ is inevitably arbitrary: European countries afford a different cut off point for a prisoner to be legally defined as older inmate. Notwithstanding this the Council of Europe has revealed that Italy has the largest elderly prison population followed by England Spain and Germany. At the root of the proliferation in elderly prisoners are increasingly harsh criminal justice policies. Furthermore data extrapolated by deconstructing sentencing research evidence that actors in the criminal justice system discriminate against elderly people by not considering their specific social and health care needs. The concluding section of this paper claims that the burden of age with the collateral consequences of incarceration can be reversed with appropriate resources. The proposal here is for a human rights framework to the laws policies and practices relating to aging and seriously ill people in prison. Such framework can provide assessment guidelines for developing or evaluating existing public health and criminal justice laws such as compassionate and geriatric release laws.