incarceration] and difficulty adapting
upon release. A University of Oxford
study found that more than 80 per
cent of male prisoners aged 60 plus
suffered a chronic illness or disability.
Although there are some palliative
care suites across Britain, there aren't
nearly enough to meet demand.
Many of our prisons were built
during the Victorian era, to house
young men in the peak of physical
fitness. Says Peter Clarke, Her
Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons,
“In [HMP] Dartmoor—constructed in
1804 to house prisoners of war—the
cell doors are simply too narrow to
accommodate wheelchairs. I recently
encountered a wheelchair user who
couldn’t get out of his cell unaided, so
he was relying on another prisoner to
help him. The impact of this was that
this poor gent was basically just lying
on his bed for the whole day. Our
inspectors found him lying there with
a urine bottle under his blanket. The
prison state is simply not configured
to give long-term residential care to
elderly or disabled people.”There is, at the time of writing, no
comprehensive national strategy for
the provision of social care in prisons,
which means that no long-term plan
has been devised for coping with the
problems and pressures raised by the
growing age of our prison population.
The UK has had four justice secretaries
in four and a half years, and the
distraction of Brexit and lack of
permanent attention from a single
minister, means no meaningful
domestic policy has been constructed.
As it stands, older prisoners are
often at the mercy of the so-calledDOING TIME
HMP Dartmoor, built in
1804, is not well-suited to
older or disabled prisoners
IAN DAGNALL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO