Ageing Crisis Faced by Older Prisoners: Challenges and Strategies

Policy and society

Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES:...........................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
This article is about the ageing crisis which are faced by the older prisoners across many nations which
has been resulted in financial, medical and programmatic challenge for correctional health care system.
This article also decribes some of the challenges facing correctional systems which are setted up for
providing health care to older adults, and to highlight some strategies to improve their medical care and
identifies areas in need of reform. This article was chosen because it was appropriate according to the
given topic and is given much importance in today’s time and is a serious issue (Ginnivan, Butler and
Withall, 2018). The issues discussed in the article are vital that is regarding to the growing number and
increasing proportions of aged prisoners. A conference was held by the international committee of red
cross which was named as “ageing and imprisonment” which focuses on needs of older prisoners to know
about the institutional, legal and health care needs of older adults. The main objective of the review is to
have a detailed information about the elderly inmates about their health care and their legal and
institutional needs. This matter is important because the needs of old aged prisoners are not dealt
separately in most of the prisons. But this section of prisoners who are old needs extra care, support and
should have right for basic health and medical facilities. This article also discuss the institutional, legal
and health care needs of incarcerated older adults, and the approaches which are taken by some
correctional systems which meets their needs. On the basis of the research some of the reviews are added
and by reading the topic many other reports and problems were related with this issue. This essay is
important in general for the mass to understand the importance of this issue and the things which could be
done to resolve it economically and easily. There was a policy named as “ compassionate release” which
grants sick and elderly inmates a chance to spend their final days outside of a prison cell. The main idea
or the thesis statement of this essay is about the older and ill prisoners who are facing many challenges
such as financial, medical and programmatic challenge for correctional health care system and how these
challenges can overcome over the period of time.
MAIN BODY
DISCUSSION: The main argument of this article is “do older prisoners should not be given the
basic facilities that their aged people living in a community receives? Is growing bars, ageing
and dieing in prisons good? Shouldn’t their be reforms for old age prisoners?”
The worldwide population is ageing dramatically and this phenomenon is also reflected in
correctional populations throughout the world. For example in UK , the overall prison population
grew by 51% between 2000 and 2009, such a rapid rise in number of prisoners has been
described as correctional “ageing crisis” which poses an urgent challenge for correctional health
care systems especially those poorly equipped to meet the complex needs of adults (Dawes,
2009).
In an evidence to this argument, most correctional facilities were designed to restrict the liberty
of young people, not to provide optimal care for the aged. As a result, the correctional facilities
are often ill-equipped to meet the needs of older adults with complex medical conditions and
physical disabilities. These facilities often require residents to contend with challenging