VSAs a result of the extension of limitation periods and the increase in the length of sentences, the aging of the prison population highlights the limits of care for elderly people with loss of autonomy. The progressive presence of elderly people questions the French prison institution on its ability to redefine the principle of uniformity of treatment.
In reality, the challenge is crucial, because it reveals two notions: “age” and “aging”, which raise the question of the meaning of the sentence at the end of life in a constrained environment.
Conversely, far from the semantic magma that was served up to us during the presidential campaign to justify the rise in power of “building more to incarcerate more”, with largely fantasized prison projects, French legislation does not provide for any specific support for people elderly prisoners. The inflation of prison aging de facto questions the meaning and the place attributed to a social pain invisible in its justice and dignity.
An occupancy rate of 114.3%
We need to initiate a national action plan calling for a courageous political orientation in its revision of budgetary priorities in favor of improving the care of elderly prisoners. Prioritizing the development of places to live in an open environment, rather than the disjointed extension of the prison medicalized housing stock.
If the repressive machine remains launched drum beating, French prisons are struggling to meet the health needs of elderly prisoners. We bet then that this beginning of the new five-year term will be an enlightened opportunity to rethink not yet another penal reform, but rather the place of probation in urban alternatives to the imprisonment of elderly people with loss of autonomy.
At 1er January, the operational capacity of the penitentiary housing stock was 60,749 places for 69,448 prisoners, that is to say an occupancy rate of 114.3%, according to the Ministry of Justice. And according to the International Observatory of Prisons, people over the age of 60, some of whom are over 80, represented 4.1% of the prison population, or 2,820 people. Since the beginning of the 1990s, their number has increased sevenfold.
An observation that is therefore old and repeated with dramatic consequences: spatial and human promiscuity, small cells, insufficient hygiene, unbalanced diet. Not to mention the difficulty of obtaining the necessary medical aids and equipment: carers, anti-decubitus mattresses, medical bed, adapted bedding, cell for people with reduced mobility or wheelchairs.
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