Clinks and RECOOP submission to the Justice Select Committee’s enquiry into the ageing prison population

Clinks and RECOOP welcome the opportunity to jointly respond to this consultation and have answered the questions of most relevance to our work. To inform our submission we have engaged with older people who have lived experience of the criminal justice system, and refer to Clinks’ recent report Flexibility is vital and RECOOP’s Good practice guide to working with older prisoners and Approved Premises: good practice guide. 

Although there remains no accepted definition of what age constitutes an ‘older’ person in prison, our response focuses on the needs of those aged 50 and over, in recognition of the accelerated aging many people in prison experience which means, as recognised by the Justice Select Committee in their previous inquiry, that older people in prison often present physical health needs 10 years earlier than people who are not incarcerated.