Doing Harder Time?

The Experiences of an Ageing Male Prison Population in England and Wales

Natalie Mann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409428046
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317148623
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In his seminal text Society of Captives, Gresham Sykes discusses the general pains of imprisonment to which all prisoners are subjected: the deprivation of liberty, the deprivation of heterosexual relationships, and the deprivation of autonomy. Sykes recognised that different prisoners experience these pains differently, and as a result, are affected to a greater or lesser degree by their time inside. In this groundbreaking book, Natalie Mann investigates the idea that apart from the general pains of imprisonment discussed by Sykes, certain characteristics which certain prisoners hold makes them more likely to suffer from what she terms term 'added pains', i.e. the extra difficulties, deprivations and frustrations which exist within certain subsections of the prison population. The ageing prison population is a key example of a group who experience added pains of imprisonment. Their weaker appearance, their old-fashioned views and their less able bodies are all factors which result in them experiencing extra problems within prison. It is these added pains and the ageing men's experiences of them, which this book addresses. Framed within the theoretical perspective of structuration theory, but also drawing on aspects of Goffman's interactionism and Bourdieu's concept of habitus, this book offers a unique interpretation of research carried out with ageing prisoners and their prison officers and shows the reality of prison for those who are reaching the end of their life course.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Our society is simply not used to thinking about older people in terms of their involvement in crime and the criminal justice system. Saturated by stereotypical images of the ‘elderly’ as frail victims of crime, the criminal experiences of this age group have been systematically ignored. With an increasing number of ageing individuals committing crime and being sentenced to prison, there is an immediate need to gain a much more comprehensive understanding of this section of the prison population. Existing studies have been carried out predominantly in the USA, with only very recent attention being paid to this area of criminology in the UK (for example see Crawley and Sparks, Wahidin). The majority of existing studies have concentrated on single aspects of older prisoners’ experiences, such as access to education, problems with health care and the benefits of segregation and so it is the aim of this book to make a contribution to the holistic study of the experiences of the ageing prison population in the UK.

In recent years, there has been a slow but very steady increase in older men’s reception to prison, and this has provided the best evidence we have regarding the extent of older criminality, as Table 1.1 highlights.

Table 1.1 Changes in the sentenced adult male prison population, by age group England and Wales, 2000 and 2010

Source: Adapted from Ministry of Justice (2011)1

Despite constituting a relatively small proportion of suspects and offenders in the criminal justice system, the figures clearly indicate that older men do increasingly appear in the recorded crime statistics in the UK, and this is a reality which has forced criminologists and policy makers alike to accept the notion of ‘ageing offenders’. This trend has also been evident in the USA and whilst some researchers (Malinchak 1980; Newman et al. 1984), thought they were detecting the first ripples of a ‘grey crime wave’ and an emerging social problem in which elderly individuals would commit a disproportionate amount of crime (see Rothman et al. 2000), more recent studies (Long 1992; Steffensmeier 1987) have pointed out that factors such as changing definitions of crime may have resulted in inconsistent reporting methodology which may be to blame for the rise in older arrestees.

Although the idea of a ‘geriatric crime wave’ has been dismissed (Prison Reform Trust 2007), the reality remains unchanged and each year we are imprisoning a greater number of older men, as Table 1.2 highlights.

Table 1.2 Male receptions into prison establishments under an immediate custodial sentence by year and age, England and Wales

Source: Adapted from Ministry of Justice (2011)2

As Table 1.2 demonstrates, the number of male prisoners aged 60 years and over increased significantly during the ten-year period from 1999 to 2009 making them the fastest growing population in prison, reflecting a trend which began at the start of the new millennium. Although part of this increase can be attributed to overall increases in the prison population, Fazel et al. (2002) believe that ‘punitive bifurcation’, a policy which allows the Government to administer both ‘harsh’ and ‘soft’ sentencing policies concurrently, has resulted in prisoners serving longer sentences, in a time when, apart from robbery and gun offences, crime has fallen, a fact which makes the situation even more surprising (Kennedy 2004, 14).

Similarly, this extraordinary trend has been identified by the Prison Reform Trust as a direct result of ‘sentence inflation’ (Prison Reform Trust 2007), the increasing severity of sentences administered by the courts. Older offenders are simply one group within the Criminal Justice System whose activity falls within the scope of crimes attracting harsher penalties, for example sexual offences.

The prison population grew rapidly under the New Labour Government, compared to the slow and steady increase in population under their Conservative predecessors, and as Matravers and Hughes (2003) highlight, this was a direct result of New Labour’s tough crime policy, which as they explain, ‘singled out groups of serious offenders for “special treatment” in the form of extended prison sentences and supervision and surveillance in the community’ (2003, 51). As Matravers and Hughes go on to discuss, one such group of offenders targeted with this increasingly punitive legislation, were sex offenders (2003, 51, 53).

In an attempt to readdress the balance of the justice system in favour of the victims of crime, and heavily influenced by the public’s increasing concern with sex offenders (Bridges 2003), New Labour implemented a number of legislative changes, including longer custodial sentences, such as the introduction of mandatory life sentences for those convicted of a second serious sexual assault by virtue of the Crime Sentences Act 1997 (Maguire et al. 1997), ‘extended post-release supervision, and registration and surveillance within the community’ (Matravers and Hughes 2003, 53–54).

Despite such tough legislation also being introduced for other types of offenders, including violent and drug offenders (Matravers and Hughes 2003), it was the pursuit of the sex offender which did so much to increase the population of prisoners aged 50 years and over, under the New Labour Government. As Crawley and Sparks explain,

One important factor (in the increase of the older prisoner population) seems to be the very much greater readiness (and technical capacity) of police and prosecutors to pursue and secure convictions against sex offenders, including those charged with ‘historic’ offences (many elderly men in prison are serving sentences for crimes allegedly committed two, three or even four decades ago (2005a,1).

This net-widening which aimed to capture offenders whose crimes were committed decades ago, did demonstrate a recognition by New Labour’s policy makers that sex crime can produce severe physical and psychological damage (Matravers and Hughes 2003), even years after the offence was committed. However, as Crawley and Sparks discuss, the imprisoning of elderly men for crimes they committed possibly 40 years ago can create many problems; they explain with reference to one 79-year-old man in their study, who had just been given a natural life sentence:

Thomas felt bewildered and resentful that he had been imprisoned for crimes carried out so long ago; he felt justice should be swift as well as fair and from his experience it was neither. It was now – decades after the crime was committed and when he himself felt too old to cope with imprisonment – that he was being punished (2006, 73–74).

Ever since Michael Howard famously claimed at the Conservative Party Rally of 1993 that ‘prison works’, there has been a general consensus by politicians in power that the use of imprisonment should continue to take precedence over other forms of punishment. However, since the general election in 2010 and the resulting Coalition Government, this consensus does seem to have been discarded. With Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, stating that in the past, prison has ‘proved a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens’ (BBC News June 2010), we may now see the use of imprisonment decrease in favour of the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ which, although vague in its details, aims to cut the prison population by 3,000 over the following four years (Guardian October 2010) and drastically transform prison employment (Howard League 2011).

In a time when crime has been falling steadily, and more sentencing options are now available to prosecutors in the form of community penalties, why has the prison population continued to rise? Hough et al. conclude two main reasons in their 2003 study. First, sentencers are now imposing longer prison sentences for serious crimes, and second, they are more likely to imprison offenders who ten years ago would have received a community penalty or a fine. These changes in sentencing have come about, they suggest, as a result of ‘… an increasingly punitive climate of political and media debate about punishment, legislative changes and new guideline judgements, and sentencers’ perception of changes in patterns of offending’ (Hough et al. 2003,1).

However, despite clear legislative guided reasons for the continued use of imprisonment as the main form of punishment, its increased use has in turn added to the dire situation which the penal system now finds itself in, as Carrabine et al. explain: ‘at a very basic level, [the penal crisis] can be regarded as simply too many offenders and too few prison places, a situation that has given rise to overcrowding, under-staffing, decrepit conditions and poor security’ (2004, 290). We now have more ageing men than ever, living in institutions which were clearly not designed with such an age group in mind, and it is this facet of older criminality which I and others (Aday 1994, 2003, 2006; Crawley and Sparks 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006; Wahidin 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2005a; Wahidin and Aday 2005) have wished to investigate.

Older Offenders

Contrary to popular assumption, ageing offenders are not all ‘dirty old men’, sentenced for sexual offences. As Figure 1.1 demonstrates, the reality is quite different.

With a wide variety of offences, including property crimes, violence, drugs and fraud, along with more serious offences such as sexual crimes, the aged prison population is far from homogeneous (Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectors of Prisons 2004).

With lifers constituting one fifth, and new entrants and recidivists constituting the remainder (Prison Reform Trust 1998), this complex mix of offences and sentence lengths creates a potentially problematic situation for prisons, in terms of education, training programmes, rehabilitation courses and general prison activities.

Figure 1.1 Male prison population aged 55 years and over, on immediate custodial sentence, by offence group, England and Wales

Recent Changes in the Management of Older Prisoners

It has been argued by some US researchers that prison is somewhat of a ‘sanctuary’ for older people, protecting them from the harsh realities of everyday life, such as poverty, loneliness and isolation (Reed and Glamser 1979; Wiltz 1982). However, although documenting ‘one side of the coin’ in terms of older people’s experiences of imprisonment, these rather outdated studies do perhaps, as the Prison Reform Trust (2003) has suggested, relate more to those prisoners who are sentenced mid-life, and then grow old within the prison setting. Paradoxically, other studies have found that for ageing individuals, prison is a place of fear and seclusion (Aday 1994; Bergman and Amir 1973); a place which negatively affects its older inhabitants (Crawley and Sparks 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006; Wahidin 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b; Wahidin and Aday 2005).

Despite the growing number of older prisoners across the globe, at present the USA is the only country to systematically differentiate between prisoners based on age, and once sentenced, ageing offenders are housed in specially designed institutions away from the mainstream prison population (Prison Reform Trust 2003).

Proponents of such segregation discuss the importance of older prisoners being protected from the hostility and aggression of prison life; they stress the benefits which age-specific training and education programmes can bring, along with such positive aspects as commonality among the men, which helps friendships to form (Adams 1995). However, there are many who are critical of such specialised units. As the Prison Reform Trust (2003) highlights, some authors feel that stimulation and motivation may become problematic in an environment exclusively made up of elderly prisoners, and others argue that because older prisoners add a sense of stability and order to prisons, because of their effect on the younger men, they should be kept in the mainstream population (see Prison Reform Trust 2003).

In response to increased morbidity rates, which ageing prisoners tend to experience, several prisons in the USA have developed facilities similar to those of a nursing home providing 24-hour medical care (Aday 1994) in which to house their older prisoners. Initially, such ‘care-home’-style prisons seem to be an excellent solution to the growing needs of ageing prisoners in the USA. However, owing to a lack of appropriate training for prison staff, this ‘solution’ can create further problems, as one officer in Malcolm’s study explains: ‘I know how to run prisons, not old-age homes’ (1988, 6). At present, the USA remains the only country to recognise the need for age-specific policies, and by housing ageing prisoners in specialised establishments (Aday 2003, 153; Prison Reform Trust 2003, 27–29; Wahidin 2004a, 198–200), they have at least taken steps to address the unique needs of older offenders.

Although segregated accommodation has faced much criticism, this revolutionary way of housing older offenders did penetrate the UK penal system in 1997, in the emergence of HMP Kingston’s E Wing, which was opened in response to the rising number of ageing prisoners in the system. However, in his 2001 review of HMP Kingston, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, concluded that:

The role of E wing was unclear. Staff as well as prisoners were confused as to its purpose. It seemed to be a combination of general support, sheltered accommodation, specialist care for the elderly and a nursing home … The less mobile found it difficult to get around a wing on three floors (Prison Reform Trust 2003).

Having received another major blow in 2005, when Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, heavily criticised the deteriorating conditions in which elderly lifers were housed (The Times 2003), the new Governor of HMP Kingston closed E Wing shortly after his arrival in 2004. The 30 individuals who had resided there were introduced back into the system, and those requiring nursing care or assistance with daily living (ADLs) were transferred to HMP Norwich’s new, purpose-built Elderly Prisoner Unit (Prison Governor, Personal Correspondence, March 2006). Providing beds for 15 men, this style of ‘nursing-home’ facility is comparable to those found in the USA, however, at a cost of 1.5 million the success of this unique facility is at present unknown (Look East News Report 2005).

Despite the increasing number of older individuals being received into prison each year in the UK, the prison service still has no policy on the management and care of older prisoners. However, despite this lack of a national strategy, it is clear that certain individuals at certain institutions in the prison system are, at last, considering the needs of the older prisoners, as Crawley and Sparks discuss:

At the local level, amongst prison managers and staff working at close quarters with a growing number of elderly prisoners, there have … been a number of notable innovations. It is generally the case that these staff feel that they are required to improvise in the absence of any significant central guidance. Nevertheless … older prisoners have become much more clearly visible to their custodians, and this provides … some basis in practice on which wider initiatives might be developed (2005c, 354).

Such findings are also echoed by Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers (2008), in her follow up report to the 2004 thematic review ‘No Problems – old and quiet’. Citing examples of good practice across the prison estate, she notes that the positive developments which have occurred are largely due to the hard work and innovative action taken by individual prison establishments and non-government agencies, such as Age UK (formerly Age Concern), the Prison Reform Trust and NACRO. As she states, ‘There is still far too much reliance on the unsupported initiative of particularly committed officers, and too great an assumption that the care of older prisoners … is a matter for health services’ (2008, 5).

Despite the continuing lack of an official strategy on older prisoners, the 2004 thematic review has resulted in a number of positive changes, which include the formulation of the Older People in Prison Forum, an organisation set up in 2005 by Age Concern, which brings together representatives from statutory and voluntary organisations who pilot work with older prisoners, and the rewriting of Prison Service Order (PSO) 2855 on disabilities, to include a section on older people in prison (Prison Reform Trust 2008).

Although it is very unlikely that the large-scale use of older offender units, such as that seen at HMP Norwich, will be introduced as a solution to the increasing number of older prisoners in the system in England and Wales, there are a large number of individual establishments which feature age-related initiatives, schemes, programmes and accommodation (see Appendix 1 for a more detailed account), which as Wahidin and Cain (2006) explains, allows for a flexible approach to the needs of elders without excluding them from the main prison environment.

Prison Research

Research within prisons often attracts a certain amount of incomprehension from those outside the field, as many find it hard to understand why one would want to carry out research in a potentially dangerous and hostile environment. This is something which Liebling addresses:

What makes some people (like me) seek them (prisoners) out and others shun them? … Both extremes of human nature – its capacity for good and evil – are present in prison in perhaps their starkest form. All variations on human behaviours – from compassion and wisdom to abuse and life threatening violence – are observable … Prisons are raw, and sometimes desperate, special places. They can also precipitate remarkable honesty (1999b, 151–52).

As Becker (1967) highlights, once social researchers acknowledge the right of deviant groups to be heard, they invite a ‘charge of bias’. However, by taking an appreciative stance during the research process (see Cohen and Taylor 1972, 182), thi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Child Sex Offenders
• 3 Ageing and the Prison Regime
• 4 Coping Strategies and Sources of Support
• 5 Power, Order and the Maintenance of a Masculine Identity
• 6 Discussions and Conclusions
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index