Geriatric Carcerality: The Prison and the Aging Crisis

• In Event: Roundtable: (Re)Theorizing "The Prison" as an Institution

Abstract

Canada is experiencing an aging crisis in its federal correctional system. The number of incarcerated older adults is rising; as this population ages, so too do the health services required to keep older adults supplied with adequate health care. This aging population faces multiple challenges, including but not limited to multiple medical comorbidities, geriatric syndromes, and functional decline as well as access to palliative care, medical assistance in dying (MAiD), and end-of-life care. Moreover, while early release (via compassionate release and medical parole) exist, the majority of incarcerated people cannot access them. Such an aging crisis, we contend, calls upon us to now reconsider the broader socio-carceral context of what we term the geriatric carcerality of prison as an institution. We argue the intent of confinement now is to punish prisoners through the aging process, while the detriment of confinement (alongside the inadequate health care inside the prison) both accelerates and exacerbates the aging process, inevitably punishing prisoners beyond their sentences. Our purpose is not to create a typology of geriatric carcerality, but rather to demonstrate the multiplicity of carceral conditions at work within the modern iteration of the prison’s now geriatric context, with specific focus on the current state of federal prisons in Canada. We draw upon scholarship, government reports, and policy, suggesting the identity of the prison has shifted to resituate its intent, detriment, and spatiality around the elderly prisoner, further calling into question the prison’s objectives of punishment and/or rehabilitation and the purpose of prison at large.

Authors

• James Richard Gacek, University of Regina

• Amin Asfari, University of Regina