Hidden Injuries? Researching the Experiences of Older Men in English Prisons

: The numbers of elderly men in the prisons of England and Wales has grown significantly over the past decade, and they continue to rise. Based on intensive fieldwork in four English prisons, this article explores the prison experiences of men aged 65 years and over. Some of our interviewees had grown old in prison, some had served previous prison sentences and others (the majority) had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment in later life. These men had no prior experience of imprisonment. We are concerned in this article with the impacts of imprisonment on this prisoner group, and with the ‘hidden injuries’ generated by the prison regime and environment. Prisoners in this age group have to date received little research attention, and scant acknowledgement in policy debates in the United Kingdom. We will argue that those impacts may be magnified, in practical ways, by this inattention.