The intention of this conceptual paper is to explore the largely un-noted needs for care and support for older adults who have been released from prison, particularly in relation to the care needs pathway from care planning during the prison sentence to reintegration into the community and, if relevant, support for end-of-life care.
It draws upon the criminology, social work and public health literature on older prisoners and post-custodial social resettlement to compile evidence about the “accelerated ageing”, the health complexity and social isolation experienced by this group and to create a four-stage, four-level conceptual model of care and support transition from custody to community.
Ageing prison leavers experience a distinctive combination of accelerated physical and cognitive ageing, thin family and social networks and structural gaps at the point of release, where prison-based continuity of care abruptly ends. The existing service responses are focused on the custodial phase of release and are relatively well-documented in terms of community-reintegration and ongoing-care. This imbalance is tackled through the proposed framework which identifies actions by pathway stages and levels of support.
The framework provides practitioners, statutory social care agencies and probation and prison services with a common framework in which to audit the provision that is currently offered to ageing prison leavers and highlight current trends of provision of support that is focused on the custody and pre-release phase but which is sparse in the community stages.
This paper provides a structured pathway approach, which links the already existing literature on older prisoners with post-release social care work, as a planning tool for a population that in practice lies in the middle of criminal-justice and older-people’s services.
