Aging Prison Population a Challenge for Canadian System

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By London Free Press (Canada)

Published: 06/16/2003

First, prison took their freedom. Then it took their youth. Now, in an era of stricter parole rules, mandatory sentencing and convictions for crimes committed long ago, Canada's prisons are brimming with elderly -- and some say it's time to let them out.
'We've got some prisons that are virtually geriatric prisons,' said Graham Stewart, executive director of the John Howard Society, which lobbies for the rights of prisoners.
'We really have to ask ourselves how it benefits us as a society that people who have become low risk of re-offending are staying in jail for years, often for offences that took place many years before.'
Correctional Service Canada defines elderly or older offenders as those age 50 and over, because prison life accelerates the aging process by an estimated 10 years, said CSC spokesperson Michele Pilon-Santilli.
About 17 per cent of some 21,000 federal inmates are 50 or older, compared with just 8.4 per cent in 1993, Pilon-Santilli said. Currently, the country's oldest female inmate is 92; the oldest male is 85.
Three unique causes have contributed to the growth of the elderly in Canadian prisons.
First, there's the aging of the population as a whole. The median age of Canadians -- the age at which half the population is older and half younger -- was 37.6 in the 2001 census, up from 35.3 in 1996.
The census also found that 13 per cent of the population was over 65 and that those 80 and older comprised the fastest-growing segment of the population, increasing by 41.2 per cent between 1991 and 2001.
At the same time, the last three decades have seen inmates serve longer sentences before becoming eligible for parole, Stewart said.
'Over the last 30 years in Canada, those convicted of murder have had their parole eligibility dates increase from seven years to 25 years.'
And a recent surge in old charges, typically involving sexual abuse dating back decades, has resulted in a number of older people being convicted and incarcerated, he said.
Elderly prisoners pose a unique problem: behind bars, they're a huge drain on resources, while on the outside they often find themselves incompatible with the rest of society.
'You've got increasingly difficult problems with re-integration into the community, because it's very hard to put them into traditional halfway houses and so on,' he said.
'Often, senior citizens' homes don't want them and halfway houses are very difficult environments for them to function in.'
Most older prisoners are serving long sentences for violent crimes or sex offences -- two good reasons to keep them in prison, said Gary Rosenfeldt, the executive director of Victims of Violence.
'Victims spend a lifetime suffering as a result of this individual's crime,' Rosenfeldt said.
'Just because someone gets older, I don't see where we should feel compelled to simply put these people back into the community.'
The idea that they're less likely to break the law again at their age doesn't hold water, he said. 'It's proper and right that the individual serve their time in prison.' Correctional Services can't change the length of time a person is in jail, Pilon-Santilli noted.
But it is developing programs to help older prisoners deal with the unique issues they face, both on the inside and the outside, after having spent a large chunk of their lives behind bars.
'If you've been incarcerated for 20 or 25 years, coming back out into society can be very scary,' she said.
Technology that's old hat to the general public -- debit cards or even bank machines, for instance -- can be bewildering to a former inmate, she added. 'Some offenders don't want to come out.'
LifeLine is a CSC program that enlists the help of long-term prisoners free on parole who come back to their old institutions to help other 'lifers' make their time in prison more productive and adapt to life on the outside.
While older inmates are a growing problem in Canada, it pales in comparisons to the challenges faced in the U.S., a country where 'life without parole' means exactly that.
For Stewart, the American experience is a cautionary tale.
'That's what happens with really long sentences; you end up with really old people in prison who are actually at a quite low risk of recidivism,' he said. 'You end up putting quite a lot of your resources into caring for people who actually aren't a risk.'
California critics have recommended letting out older prisoners, since they cost so much more to incarcerate and run a low risk of re-offending.

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