Japanese Prisons Face Swelling Elderly Population

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Handrails run down the middle of the hallway to help prisoners make their way from one end to the other. Adult diapers are neatly stacked in a corner. When an inmate chokes on his rice and coughs, a supervisor rushes over to rub his back.

Welcome to the world of old-age prisons. Japan's population is aging faster than anywhere else, and with that has come an even sharper rise in elderly inmates.

The number of Japanese prisoners aged 60 or older has doubled over the past decade to more than 10,000. That outpaces a 30 percent increase in the general population for that age group. The elderly now represent 16 percent of the nation's inmates.

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The Looming Challenge of Dementia in Corrections

by John Wilson, PhD, and Sharen Barboza, PhD in CorrectCare journal

As the inmate population ages, dementia will become increasingly common in our jails and prisons. In the community, the rate of new cases of dementia is expected to double in the next four decades. Although we don’t really know what the prevalence of dementia is among inmates, there is no reason to think it is less than in the community.

In fact, there is reason to think it may be two to three times more frequent in corrections than in the community: Inmates have fewer protective factors and more risk factors; increasing numbers are being incarcerated into late age or for life; and inmates may grow physiologically older faster than people in the community due to high risk lifestyles and poor health care prior to incarceration. Base rates for serious mental disorders are two to four times greater in corrections than in the community. Dementia is unlikely to be an exception.

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