Should we help our OAPs? (Old Age Prisoners)

Outside a cell in Dartmoor Prison a man is sitting in a wheelchair waiting to be pushed to the main gates. Derek, who is 75, has to meet a taxi in half an hour to get to a crucial hospital appointment but can’t get a push from a warden because (so he’s been told) it contravenes health and safety regulations. Instead, he has to rely on an obliging fellow prisoner.

Except, of course, very few of them are obliging. Since arriving in Dartmoor, Derek has been bullied by inmates younger and stronger than him while his own strength has rapidly declined. He doesn’t have many people he can call friends. Half an hour comes and goes and Derek doesn’t move. Not for the first time, he misses his appointment.

“It’s very depressing,” he says. “Whoever you are, whether you’re in prison or outside, you’re still entitled to basic medical care.” Stories like Derek’s are becoming increasingly common as the number of older inmates in our penal system escalates. People aged over 60 are now the fastest-growing sector of the prison population in England and Wales, their numbers doubling in the past 10 years. The majority of inmates are still aged between 18 and 40, but there are now 3,333 over 60 and 42 over the age of 80. The oldest prisoner held at the time of the latest count, in September last year, was 92.

Of course, people in their sixties are hardly “old”, but incarceration is reckoned to accelerate the ageing process by 10 years. So it’s significant that of a total prison population of just over 88,000 — the highest it has ever been — around four per cent are now 60 or more. And with that percentage rising inexorably, the former Home Secretary Ken Clarke recently suggested, only half-jokingly, that we need to start building “pensioner prisons”.

There are various reasons for this alarming trend. Whatever the common perception, sentences are longer and harsher than they used to be. There are more so-called “­lifers”, serving 20, 30 even 40 years, whose parole hearings are very often delayed. Thanks to advances in DNA analysis, an increasing number of people are being convicted for “cold cases” that date back two or three decades. And, worryingly, more and more elderly people, unable to find accommodation and fed up with sleeping rough, are reportedly committing offences simply to get the bed and board that prisons provide.

The problem is, of course, that our prisons were not designed with the elderly in mind. Most of them are old Victorian buildings with steep staircases and the most basic of facilities. Although not exempt from the Equality Act 2010, which requires public buildings to provide access for the disabled, many have yet to adapt and don’t regard their first priority to be the care and supervision of the elderly. Prisoners who are ill do receive health care, but those with chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis or failing eyesight are left very much to their own devices. If they are frail, or need a Zimmer frame or a wheelchair to get around, they often have to rely on other people to bring them their meals and if they have dementia they can struggle to perform the most basic of daily tasks. More than half of all elderly prisoners suffer from a mental illness, the most common being depression. Infirmity also leads to isolation and bullying.

It goes without saying that these people, on the whole, no longer pose a threat to the public. If they have been inside for a long time they are often completely rehabilitated and statistics show they are far less likely to reoffend. Yet the cost of keeping the infirm behind bars can be as much as £60,000 a year per inmate, compared to around £35,000 a year for someone who is fit.

“For older people, prison can be a double punishment,” says Mark Day, head of policy and communications at the Prison Reform Trust. “Not only does it take away their liberty, it can also have a disproportionate effect on their mental and physical wellbeing. Vulnerable prisoners, many of whom are old, can find themselves at risk of intimidation and violence and, if they have problems getting around, they are often unable to take part in prison activities which leaves them feeling excluded.”

Jobs in prison give structure and purpose to inmates’ lives but many of them are too demanding for older prisoners. Education, too, gives life inside some focus. Again, however, older inmates can face discrimination from officers who believe such things are more beneficial to younger members of the population.

Jim McKinnon, a former Roman Catholic priest from Edinburgh who works for the Restore Support Network, a group dedicated to older prisoners, describes the situation as nothing less than a “moral crisis”.

“All the research, even the Home Office’s own research, shows that at a certain point the prison experience has run its course,” he says. “It doesn’t change or rehabilitate prisoners after that point, it institutionalises them. Yet they are kept in, making their life a misery when they do finally come out. This is clearly immoral.

“At Lewes Prison, for instance, there is a deeply threatening atmosphere. You feel it as soon as you step inside. Now, what must that mean to an older guy, who perhaps hasn’t been in prison before? The old Darwinian theory applies, that the younger adapt quickly. But at 56 or 57, or older, your adapting mechanism is shot.” Such stories rather confound the popular notion that prisons are a cushy number, or that a jolly camaraderie prevails between older prisoners and their younger counterparts, as embodied by Ronnie Barker’s immortal Norman Stanley Fletcher, and his cellmate Godber, in the much-loved sitcom Porridge.

_{The BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall, who is 83, is due to be sentenced later this month}

Stuart Ware, the founder of Restore, saw the reality of the situation first hand, from the inside. He was jailed in 1996 for theft and fraud, his first offence, and left prison, at the age of 59, horrified by what he’d seen and determined to do something to help.

“It was clear,” he says now, “that something had to be done. There were prisoners with dementia, with all sorts of mental health problems, and one man on my wing who was so confused that he didn’t know where to go when he was let out of his cell. I would have to take him for breakfast, and take him back afterwards.” As for the privations suffered by Derek the wheelchair user in Dartmoor, who had no access to the prison’s educational facilities simply because he couldn’t climb a flight of steps, Ware echoes the words of the Prison Reform Trust.

“That should not be part of the punishment. The loss of freedom is the punishment. Prisons have a duty of care that at the moment is simply not being met. I even know one or two prisons, such as Albany on the Isle of Wight, where there are no proper toilet facilities and they still have slopping out. Imagine that if you’re old and infirm. It’s quite horrendous.” Ware also cites the case of an elderly prisoner who was caring for his wife when he was sent to prison. She was left as bereft as if he had died. “That’s another example of the knock-on effects of imprisoning older people,” he says.

In the United States, where more than 100,000 people are destined to end their days behind bars, the problem is even worse. From 1995 to 2010, as the US prison population expanded by 42 per cent, the number of inmates over 55 grew at nearly seven times that rate. Now, there are more than 2.2 million prisoners and the prison system is facing the genuine prospect of becoming the country’s biggest single provider of geriatric care in the next 30 years.

Some states have taken steps to tackle the issue. In Nevada a “true grit” programme has helped reduce hospital visits for about 200 inmates by offering music and art therapy as well as physical exercise, including wheelchair basketball. California is building a 1,700-bed prison to house medically infirm prisoners and Fishkill prison, in New York state, has a special unit for dementia sufferers.

Other states, like Louisiana, have passed laws making it easier for some elderly prisoners to be released after a parole hearing at which their risk for committing future crimes is assessed. But, here in Britain, reform is painfully slow. A handful of prisons, such as Norwich, have wings dedicated to elderly prisoners and at Whatton Prison near Nottingham staff work with the charity Age UK to provide educational activities. Leyhill open prison in Gloucestershire also provides day centre-type activities and quieter wings where older prisoners can escape the hurly burly of general prison life.

There is also an ongoing inquiry into the care of older prisoners by the Justice Select Committee and a bill passing through Parliament – the Care Bill – which, for the first time, places responsibility for the provision of social care in prisons firmly with local authorities, a move that should remedy the current confusion among prison officers who don’t regard the care of the elderly as part of their job.

But any proposals to cut down the number of custodial sentences handed out to older offenders (in favour of community sentences) or to release elderly prisoners on compassionate grounds are likely to be met with a great deal of resistance. A huge fuss was kicked up when the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, perhaps the most celebrated example of a prisoner who plainly posed no further threat to society, was granted early release in 2009. And many are opposed to anything other than a hefty jail sentence for the BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall who has pleaded guilty to 14 charges of indecent assault against girls aged between nine and 17. He is 83 and due to be sentenced on June 17.

_{There was a huge outcry when Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs was freed early from prison}

Of course, even if prisoners are released on account of their age, many have nowhere to go, either because family members and friends are no longer alive or are simply in no position to care for them.

McKinnon, who helps older people reintegrate into society, is 82 himself and moved to the south coast of England some years ago, anticipating a peaceful retirement. “But I’m busier than ever,” he says. “I’ve been working with prisoners and former prisoners for 30 years, and it gets under your skin.” There are plenty to choose from on the south coast, he adds – “I’m told there are more ex-cons in Weymouth than in any other town in England” – and offers the example of a “totally rehabilitated” man from Plymouth who finished a 23-year jail term for attempted murder but by the terms of his licence was not allowed to resettle in his home town, so wound up more than 100 miles away in Bournemouth, He was given “unspeakably dreadful” accommodation, but now, thanks to McKinnon’s efforts, lives in a ground-floor council flat.

“He worked hard to better himself in prison,” McKinnon says. “He did a correspondence course, and ended up with a degree from Northampton University. But he couldn’t get work, and in Bournemouth I doubt whether he met two people in two years. He had a probation officer, of course, and there are some great probation officers, but there are also some pretty indifferent ones.

“I had a phone call from him one day begging me to get him back into prison. Like so many, he had become institutionalised. He had got used to a system in which he made no decisions about how he lived. They were all made for him. So being on the outside, with next to no support network, was very hard for him. I call in now and have a weekly cuppa with him, and he’s improved enormously, but in those first two years, he really went through the pains of the damned.”

The pains of the damned. It is the kind of stirringly purgatorial image one might expect from a former Catholic priest, but even allowing for poetic licence, this ex-convict’s tribulations clearly bring shame on a civilised society. Of course, it could also be said that he and other convicted criminals start the process, by bringing shame on themselves.

“I have no argument with that,” says Ware. “You do the crime, you do the time and there are victims who are suffering and expect offenders to be punished. But we should also expect those offenders, if they are old and infirm, to receive a certain standard of care. It’s a question of simple human decency.”