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Abstract

This article closely reviews a selection of criminology studies on the pains of older prisoners to examine the construction of a particular type of ‘intolerable’ punishment. The term ‘intolerable’ depicts the moral line between acceptable state punitive treatments and those that become so unbearable they are being or should be abandoned. The article finds that the pains of older prisoners are characterised as quantitatively significant, qualitatively distinct, and comparatively worse. Such construction, however, misses the societal dimension of ageing in prison and perpetuates a reductive and stereotypical understanding of ‘old age’ centred on prisoners’ deteriorating bodies. In critically examining the role that criminological research may play in distinguishing between acceptable and intolerable punishments, the article sets out the value of documenting the pains of ageing prisoners.

Keywords

Pains of imprisonment ageing in prison old prisoners emotions intolerable punishment prison research

Introduction

There is an unarticulated assumption in much prison research that documenting the pains of imprisonment will help drive penal change, reduce punitiveness, and ultimately alleviate the suffering endured by thousands of women and men (Bosworth, 2023; DJ Hayes, 2016). Although exposing such matters can inspire action (Boltanski, 1999; Brown, 2014; Linfield, 2012; Sontag, 2004; Valier and Lippens, 2004), as Haggerty and Bucerius (2020) have convincingly argued, evidence alone is often insufficient (also see critique by Bosworth, 2023). Instead, to bring about change, scholars need to build a persuasive moral account in which they make clear how and why certain actions or responses are ‘intolerable’.

To flesh out this argument and its implications, I turn to the growing body of scholarship on elderly people in prison. That work, I argue, presents significant challenges to policymakers and legislators, because it is replete with examples of suffering, differential treatment, and poor outcomes. Older prisoners, the fastest growing group across UK prisons, endure the carceral environment in unique ways as demonstrated by scholars and prison charities (Baidawi and Trotter, 2016; Humblet, 2021; Leigey and Aday, 2022; Prison Reform Trust, 2024).

Drawing on a random sample of texts (n = 49) from an extensive database of studies produced between 2003 and 2023,¹ I consider the types of issues that can be used to define punishments as intolerable, and those that cannot. As I show, the pains of older prisoners are presented as quantitatively significant, qualitatively different from the traditional pains of imprisonment, and comparatively worse than those of younger prisoners or of older people in the community. It is important to note that the typology is experiential and exploratory and in no way exhaustive; the themes identified may also evolve and overlap. Each tends to emphasise the older person's body in its frailty and decay, as the defining aspect of the penal experience of this population.

The article proceeds as follows. First, I begin with a conceptualisation of what constitutes an ‘intolerable’ punishment. Then, I deconstruct the operationalisation of a specific intolerable punishment by exploring how criminologists represent the pains of older prisoners. In the third and concluding section, I discuss the limitations of the field and reflect on the value of researching the pains of ageing in prison and those of imprisonment more generally. Together I hope to contribute new ways of thinking about the relationship between the incarceration of older prisoners and the extended length of imprisonment, exploring the broader implications of both.

Conceptualising the construction of intolerable punishments

Defining ‘intolerable’ punishments

Sociologists of punishment are well-versed in the manner in which certain state-imposed treatments become viewed as unacceptable, or ‘intolerable’. Michel Foucault famously argued that punishment evolved from physical, often brutal public spectacles to more subtle forms of discipline and surveillance in prisons (1977). He was involved with the early 1970s radical activist group, Le Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP), to disseminate information about the conditions in French prisons. According to Foucault, the GIP's mission was to identify what was ‘intolerable’ within the prison system and foster ‘an active intolerance’ towards these injustices (Zurn and Dilts, 2015). More recently, Didier Fassin has taken up the mantle in France, theorising punishment in these terms (Fassin et al., 2018)² and stressing the role of social norms, human rights, and empathy in shaping public perception.

In all cases, the term ‘intolerable’ is used to describe acts or behaviours that breach a threshold of acceptability. Such practices need to be reformed or eradicated. Intolerable punishments cause ‘too much’ pain. The label is, however, relative and selective. What is deemed intolerable shifts and evolves and cannot be understood without attending to the context in which it arises (Bosworth, 2023; Brangan, 2024). In any case, punitive practices do not draw equal scholarly, media, and political attention and response, suggesting they are not all set on the same moral scale.³ For instance, the detention of migrant children (H Crawley and Lester, 2005; Lorek et al., 2009) and the incarceration of minors in England and Wales (Hodgson, 2024) both involve the undignified treatment of young people in zones of confinement and deprivation of liberty and cause ‘too much pain’. But they have not triggered the same societal and political response. Such prioritisation illustrates how moral hierarchies emerge between punishments, affecting how some are drawn into question, whereas others remain tolerated.

Criminologists have demonstrated how societies have an inexhaustible capacity to adjust and tolerate some forms of extremely painful state treatments. Justifications for punishment include the removal from sight of the suffering produced by the state (Spierenburg, 1984), tactics of denial and neutralisation (Brangan, 2024; Cohen, 2001; Sykes and Matza, 1957), as well as concerns about ‘risk’ and ‘security’. The acceptability of certain punitive treatments can used to construct other forms of intolerable practices. To address mass incarceration, for instance, scholars have highlighted the ‘bifurcation’ process that occurs between those offenders eligible for release and those who are considered eternally ‘dangerous’ (Seeds, 2017). A similar reciprocity is discernible between growing intolerance for the death penalty in the United States and the embrace of life without the possibility of parole (Vannier, 2021).

Documenting the pains of imprisonment and the political power of emotions

In piercing the carceral veil and documenting the pains of prisoners,⁴ criminologists reveal to the world the state's darkest deeds. Yet few explain why they conduct empirical research on the pains of imprisonment (Booth and Harriott, 2021; Carrabine and Brown, 2017). In exposing the suffering of prisoners, there is an unstated, implicit assumption that scholars can succeed in inspiring those with the power to change penal policies to revise and moderate the law. This aspiration is evident across, and discernible through, the quantity of scholarly and policy works on prisoners’ lived experiences and the range of ‘pains of imprisonment’ they face.

There is a distinction to be made, however, between intention and effect.⁵ Making suffering visible has the propensity to ‘move and excite’ (Sontag, 2004). Michelle Brown reminds us that images are ‘linked to sentiment, affect, and emotion’ and they ‘seek to garner public attention and they often do this by moving us, making us feel astonishment, revulsion, outrage, admiration, confusion, denial, connection, commitment’ (2014: 182). Linfield (2012: 30) underlines the importance of recognising the incorporation of ‘emotion into the experience of looking’ as a way for viewers to ‘allow the suffering of the world to enter into them instead of despising it as abjection’. For Arendt, the emotional reaction to seeing harm is that of ‘the animal pity by which all normal men are afflicted in the presence of physical suffering’ (1963: 106). Boltanski (1999) exposes the effect of ‘pity’ that drives public ‘indignation’ and ‘denunciation’. When he becomes indignant, the spectator becomes an actor of change, and is ‘no longer disarmed and powerless, but acquires the weapons of anger’ (1999: 57). As Valier and Lippens (2004: 319) point out, representations of suffering victims carry ‘a potent affective charge, levying an unassailable demand for our concern and commanding urgent action’. Images of pain and suffering are ‘important political arbiters in social movements’ and ‘key sites for the production and incitement of critical thinking and feeling about human suffering and social justice’ (Brown, 2014: 182). The strength of the photography, ‘comes from the visceral, emotional responses it evokes’ (Bourgois and Schonberg, 2009: 14). As Sontag wrote, ‘[f]or photographs to accuse, and possibly to alter conduct, they must shock’ (2004: 72).

But words that recount suffering can also provoke change. Scholarly research that recounts the lived experiences of incarcerated women, children, men and their families on the outside, can equally shock and stir up public emotions. And there are concrete instances when the exposure of penal suffering before voters has been transformative. Evidence of the gruesome nature of executions has been key in raising attention to the cruelty of death sentences (Alper, 2008; Denno, 2007). In bringing prisoners’ painful and degrading experiences of overcrowding into public consciousness, prison abolitionists with the support of empirical evidence have similarly, albeit briefly, destabilised mass incarceration before the United States Supreme Court (Simon, 2014).

Criminological studies can help members of the public become emotionally incensed towards what is ‘too much’ pain.⁶ Documenting the pains of imprisonment has the propensity to lay out a moral compass for identifying what needs to be contested and changed. This article explores how this compass takes form in criminological studies on the pains of older prisoners. Which characteristics are brought to the fore that may help orient the moral compass and define the line of intolerable punishment?

Deconstructing the pains of older prisoners

The quantity of pains

Many studies of pain start with issues of quantity. The scale of the problem is characterised through demographic figures and trends, death records, and by the cumulative range of psychological and physical pains and their wide-ranging ripple effects.

Increasing demographic trends and unprecedented death records

Over the past 20 years, scholars have drawn attention to the ageing of the prison population. Authors repeatedly highlight in their opening paragraphs or chapters that the elderly are the ‘fastest’ growing group behind bars (Leigey and Aday, 2022; Mann, 2016b) and underscore the global nature of the growth (AJ Hayes, 2017). The problem, they argue, will also persist. Drawing on longitudinal and historical records (Baidawi et al., 2011), (Leigey and Aday, 2022: 806) speak of how ‘the graying of prisons will continue to intensify’ using demographic projections.

Researchers contextualise the increase, pointing to the adverse effect of COVID-19 (Maschi et al., 2021) or to the impact of austerity policies on older prisoners (Wahidin and Aday, 2012). ‘The aging-in-prison epidemic has reached a critical turning point with the emergence and spread of the coronavirus causing more deaths in prisons’, we are told (Maschi et al., 2021: 18). They explain the rising death records in prison as a result of this population and explore the experiences of dying behind bars (Aday, 2006; Robinson, 2023), linking types of offences and the increase in deaths by suicide in prison (Zhong et al., 2021). The increase in elderly prisoners is repeatedly linked to the surge in conviction rates of historical sex crimes (Ievins, 2023).

The cumulation of physical and psychological pains

Studies repeatedly highlight the cumulative nature of the difficulties faced by older prisoners. In Humblet's (2021: 60) words, these people face a range of pains ‘that both consolidate and exacerbate those experienced by the (general) prisoner population’. Wahidin (2004) speaks of the ‘compounding pains’ of imprisonment for older women, and Lane et al. (2020: 340) conclude that ‘[o]verall, 85% of aging prisoners have multiple medical issues and mental health problems’. To underline the cumulative effect of pains, scholars commonly classify and list older prisoners’ disorders, impairments, and physical and cognitive decline. Thus, for example, Aday (2000: 20) recorded that in the United States, ‘eighty per cent of [the 65+ population in general] have at least one chronic illness, with multiple conditions being common: arthritis, hypertension, hearing problems, heart disease, sinusitis, diabetes, chronic respiratory disorders, high blood pressure and kidney problems’. Ultimately, older prisoners are exposed to a unique form of ‘pains of chronic health problems’ (Pratt and Hosoi, 2022). Lane et al. also enumerate the variety of mental disorders (2020: 340): ‘Specifically, inmates ages 50 to 59 were more likely to have a mental health-related disorder, including mood disorder, anxiety disorder, psychotic disorder, major depressive disorder, and personality disorder, as well as co-occurring substance use disorders’.

The pains of ageing are quantitatively significant for their ripple effects. As incarcerated people age, they become dependent on other prisoners. More than 20 years ago, E Crawley (2004: 32) described how ‘these men were heavily dependent on both formal health care and on the informal care provided by other prisoners. In all the prisons in this study, the elderly infirm received some degree of care from other prisoners—men who would help the less mobile put on their socks, fasten their buttons, fetch their meals and clean their cells’. Such prisoners also rely on prison officers who remain ambivalent towards them: some refuse to push their wheelchairs while others accept those caring responsibilities as prisoners become more dependent (Humblet, 2020).

Declining health is shown to affect relationships with people outside prison walls (Maschi et al., 2014). Communication with family members becomes difficult as individuals age. Smoyer et al. (2019: 223), for example, describe how ‘when older prisoners have spent most of their life in and out of prison, family and friends may be less likely to visit, send money, write, or accept phone calls, making prison even more isolating’.

Finally, in this enumeration, older prisoners are expensive. Trotter and Baidawi (2015) speak of the ‘costs associated with incarceration’, E Crawley (2004) refers to the ‘the spiralling costs of prison health care’ and Handtke et al. (2017a, 2017b) evoke ‘the high costs incurred when caring for the dying’. Ahalt et al. (2013) underscore the importance, but also the difficulty in quantifying the healthcare needs of older prisoners. They found that total annual prison spending in the United States had increased more than tenfold since the late 1970s to $77 billion, with 10% dedicated to healthcare. The rise in healthcare costs was largely connected ‘to the increasing number of older prisoners who have the highest burden of chronic health conditions and disabilities’ (Ahalt et al., 2013: 2040). Lee et al. (2016: 36) give the example of a prison that had successfully improved their estate for older prisoners but highlight the extreme costs involved, ‘HMP Norwich's innovative facility was welcomed by those championing the rights of older prisoners but at a cost of 1.5 million, it clearly demonstrated the financial implications of an ageing prison population’.

The quality of pain

The pains of older prisoners are not just counted but are also often presented as distinctive. In particular, being old in prison affects people's bodies.

Deteriorating and dying bodies

In a significant departure from Sykes’ concept of ‘pains of imprisonment’ that refers to the deprivations prisoners endure (1958) and from the growing attention to the tightness and depth of pervasive forms of carceral-induced suffering (Crewe, 2011), the pains of older prisoners are explained in corporal terms. Older women in prison for instance, are found to experience how the ‘prison time machine’ transforms ‘prison time’ into ‘body time’ (Wahidin, 2004). Combalbert et al. (2019) refer to prisoners’ ‘deterioration of health’ and discuss the correlation between medical ‘scores for physical mobility’ that ‘decreased with advancing age’. Aday and Krabill (2012) refer to the ‘rapid decline or accelerated biological aging’. Dagan and Vannier (2024) discuss the ‘omnipresence of the body in parole hearings’ when boards evaluate older life-sentenced prisoners’ risk and eligibility for release. As they grow weaker, older prisoners become exposed to enhanced abuse and bullying (Pratt and Hosoi, 2022). Studies also document their experiences of end-of-life and death, including what happens to their body, Novisky et al. describe the (2022: 2) ‘fears of dying while imprisoned or arising from prison health care failure, and the fate of one's belongings and body after death’.

Carceral bodies as objects of medical analysis

Criminological studies of older prisoners often emphasise the shortage of medical care and resources. Many older prisoners do not receive appropriate or consistent medical care (Aday and Maschi, 2019; Kerbs and Jolley, 2007; Novisky, 2018). Novisky (2018: 669) found ‘[Prisoners] just decided to “walk over” to the medical unit rather than wait to be placed on a medical call-out list’. For E Crawley (2005), ‘institutional thoughtlessness’ made it hard for the elderly to even access medical units. Older inmates experience delays and changes in their medications and report unmet dietary needs (Novisky, 2018). They suffer from inappropriate diagnosis and ill-adapted treatments (Aday and Maschi, 2019) that may accelerate the ageing process (Trotter and Baidawi, 2015: 201).

The release of older prisoners through medical parole or for compassionate reasons often rests on an evaluation of their health status to determine whether it is terminal (Doron and Love, 2013; Handtke et al., 2017a, 2017b). As Dagan and Vannier (2024: 8) find, ‘the [parole] board focusses on determining how many days the applicant will survive upon release’. To address the ‘risk of living’ posed by the potential survival of an older life-sentenced prisoner upon release, parole is granted only if there is evidence of sufficient bodily deterioration to ensure imminent death (Dagan and Vannier, 2024). The medicalised lens used to observe the pains of older prisoners overall relies on specialised terminology (e.g. lists of illnesses and disorders) and health data, and refers to numerous medical sources and publications, building bridges between criminology and prison sociology on the one hand, and health sciences on the other hand (Aday and Maschi, 2019; Novisky, 2018; Trotter and Baidawi, 2015).

Deteriorating bodies and the inadequacy of the carceral environment

As prisoners age and become less mobile, the spaces in which they are confined become inadequate (their distribution and design) for their movement and access to social and health care (E Crawley, 2005). Cells and beds are ill-equipped to adjust to bodies that struggle to move (E Crawley and Sparks, 2005; Sparks and Crawley, 2005), narrow doorways and corridors prevent wheelchair circulation, and shower rails or lifts are absent further limiting older prisoners’ movement (Glover, 2012). ‘Many of the shower and bathing facilities were of the wrong height according to health and safety guidelines. (…) water control buttons where someone in a wheelchair could easily reach them, others had been placed too low down for other disabled prisoners and some were far too high for anyone to use.’ (Glover, 2012: 166). E Crawley records the difficulties of ‘… having to climb stairs while carrying food trays; (e) having to shower in slippery, tiled cubicles that were not equipped with grab-rails or antislip mats.’ (2005: 356).

These environmental challenges make it difficult for older people to participate in daily supportive activities like visiting the chapel or library or taking classes or working. They may lead to isolation and exclusion (Humblet, 2021). Lee et al. (2019) found that older prisoners ‘were locked in their cells if they do not work’. These people may also be placed in vulnerable units or ‘elderly wings’, where they have (or earn) the choice to be housed in an area of the prison inhabited only by others of a similar age (AJ Hayes, 2017). Pratt and Hosoi (2022) characterise these carceral defects as new ‘pains of being out of place’. Some local initiatives have emerged; E Crawley reports that (2005: 361) ‘[a]t HMP Wymott a care assistant, currently funded through healthcare money, goes into the prison twice a week to assist with bathing’.

The pains of ageing in prison are comparatively worse

Criminologists tend to present the pains of ageing through comparisons: old prisoners’ experiences of imprisonment are contrasted to younger prisoners and to elderly people in the community.

Older prisoners versus younger prisoners: The geriatric pains of imprisonment

Older prisoners are routinely found to do ‘harder time’ than younger prisoners because they face added pains; i.e. extra difficulties, deprivations, and frustration (Mann, 2016b). Scholars refer to the ‘double marginalization older prisoners endure’ (Vannier and Nellis, 2023) or characterise them as a ‘double burden’ (Turner et al., 2018). Such accounts commonly stress that carceral environments were originally designed for young and able bodies and are ill-adapted to older and less mobile ones (Kerbs and Jolley, 2009). Prison regimes, but also rehabilitative activities, treatments and jobs, scholars remind us, are all tailored to younger prisoners (Trotter and Baidawi, 2015). Out-of-cell activities are designed for younger people, ‘recreational activities frequently involve physically taxing sports programs that are most suitable for younger inmates’ (Snyder et al., 2009: 119).

The costs of housing older prisoners are, likewise, evaluated against those of incarcerating and managing younger prisoners. ‘Concerns have been expressed about the spiralling costs of imprisoning large numbers of older people. These are estimated to be three times that of younger prisoners largely due to increased health and social care needs (Lee et al., 2019: 2; Senior et al., 2013). Finally, the distortion of time is also particularly acute among older prisoners (O’Donnell, 2014). Those who were convicted at an older age experience a rupture from the lives they had in the past (E Crawley and Sparks, 2005), whereas others who were young at conviction and have aged in prison, experience a form of ‘temporal vertigo’ oriented towards the future (Crewe et al., 2020; Kazemian, 2021; Wright et al., 2017).

Older prisoners versus old people in the community

‘Like their counterparts in the free society, geriatric inmates are more likely to experience dementia, impaired mobility, and loss of hearing and vision’ (Lane et al., 2020: 339), but ageing in prison is distinct. The social care needs of the elderly behind bars are largely overlooked (Mann, 2016a). The ageing process also begins earlier in prison. Aday and Krabill for instance write (2012: 209): ‘Older inmates are usually in worse health than their counterparts outside prison because they develop health issues much earlier due to their previous lifestyle, socioeconomic factors, and the prison environment’. Also, prisoners age at a greater pace than they would in the community, ‘Prisoner populations are therefore thought to have a biological age that is comparable to the age of community populations who are 10–15 years older’(Aday and Krabill, 2012: 105). Finally, their marginalisation and levels of precarity are more acute in terms of housing, education and income, changes in social status can have long-term effects on future life chances, particularly where there are accumulated levels of dis/advantage.

Why document the pains of older prisoners?

The reductive view of intolerable ageing in prison

Beyond prison: The pains of older prisoners as a societal concern

In highlighting the number of older people entering, and ageing in, prison, and in reporting the cumulative range of challenges they face, scholars insist that the punishment of elderly people should concern us all. Their pains mirror the problems facing all societies – how should we care for our elderly? These figures inexorably bring into society a new set of hurdles. The costs that arise from their medical needs, finding and financing adequate housing spaces, and trained personnel are substantial. Many have lost contact with family and friends, and upon release, face a high risk of homelessness. Their institutionalisation after spending such long periods in prison increases their social isolation. Old age, combined with a criminal record, in particular sex crimes, challenges their ability to reintegrate. In other words, the pains experienced by prisoners as they age highlight the need for collaboration with various external services. They also make clear the range of societal repercussions that extend beyond the prison walls. Ageing in prison is not just a prison concern; it is a broader societal issue.

The ‘ideal’ older prisoner: Entrenching discriminatory stereotypes

Together, these criminological studies, which span decades and different jurisdictions, communicate the same moral message that what is done by the state to those who are old is reprehensible. Yet, this account of ageing and old age in prison, with its emphasis on vulnerability, is partial and essentialising. It is also dependent on a comparison with other groups. As standalone experiences, the pains of older prisoners do not seem to inspire concern or moral condemnation. They need to surpass in suffering what other prisoners and old people in the community experience.

Indeed, in many of the accounts, it seems that prisoners only become old, and thus a matter for concern, once they lose agency and control over their body and mind. Rarely is the older prisoner in pain cast as someone who has developed a sense of purpose or wisdom to cope with their punishment (although, see Avieli, 2022). Their punishment is only ‘intolerable’, when they become dependent and in need of treatment or care; they can no longer fare alone. The ‘ideal’ old prisoner, to borrow Christie's (1986) turn of phrase, must be vulnerable and at the state's mercy to ignite emotions and warrant political attention. Intolerable punishment is, in this way, reserved for a certain ‘type’ of older prisoner.

This construction of intolerability, grounded on dependency and vulnerability, often overlooks the differential effects of gender and ethnicity on the experiences of ageing in prison (although see Wahidin's work on older women in prison; e.g. Wahidin, 2004; Wahidin and Aday, 2012). Instead, the prison is once more presented as colourblind (Phillips and Earle, 2010) and genderless. This not only erases the phenomenological specificities of growing old behind bars, but reinforces, however unintentionally, some of the unequal race and gender relations that keep prisons entrenched.

‘Too much’ pain and corrosive emotions

There are other limitations to this body of scholarship. An emotional response to the pains of ageing may, for example, stall rather than fuel progressive reforms, as old people's experiences are simply layered atop hundreds of other similar accounts. As Haggerty and Bucerius (2020) put it, the scholarship on the ‘pains of imprisonment’ has piled up in an ‘uncoordinated aggregation’, ‘providing little more than an exercise of ‘pain spotting’, the analysis of which is ‘purely diagnostic’ (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2020). The accumulation of knowledge on carceral suffering risks ‘becoming a dull chorus that cumulatively stresses that prison is a consistently wretched place’ (Haggerty and Bucerius, 2020: 10). The proliferation of studies on the ‘pains of imprisonment’ become diluted or dulled as subgroups of harms caused by prison are added.

Framing the suffering endured by old prisoners as yet another ‘pain’ may, on these grounds, be a blunt tool for change through overuse and overextension.⁷ We know from elsewhere that showing the suffering of others can breed desensitisation and saturation or build a form of habituation (Sontag, 1979). Repetitive exposure to pain and to suffering can also produce uncertain emotional outcomes, such as voyeuristic spectatorship or silent apathy, in which the viewer is turned into a spectator who watches at a distance the pains endured by others (Boltanski, 1999). Empirical prison research risks descending into a ‘spectacle’, in which research audiences read and watch, unmoved, the information about those who age in prison.

The knowledge that prisoners are suffering can also produce a counter narrative to say that the pains are not real, not important, or that they are deserved or do not matter. Or, the evidence of suffering may reinforce or comfort punitive emotions. Research on how citizens are receptive to ‘tough on crime’ policies suggest that members of societies may welcome evidence that prison is harmful (Frost, 2010) rather than be disturbed and inclined to support meaningful prison reform.

In any case, there are ways to deny aroused emotions. We may be attentive to the harms being carried out but neutralise their emotional impact (Cohen, 2001; Sykes and Matza, 1957). The construction of the intolerable is further complicated by the intensity emotions require and their volatility. Feelings associated with shock tend to be short-lived and require ongoing stimulus (Jones and Wessely, 2006). We seem to only awaken from our torpor when something extra-ordinary happens. The extent to which ageing in prison can produce such an effect is questionable. Because the boundaries of the intolerable are constantly evolving, pinpointing the precise emotional label that can drive progressive change is hard with respect to older prisoners, perhaps impossible.

The intolerable punishment of older prisoners and the all-encompassing body

The studies reviewed in this article place great importance on older prisoners’ bodies. Although it is not uncommon for criminological research to explore how state punishments affect and mark bodies – the tortured body (Spierenburg, 1984), the mistreated body (Garland, 2011), the stained body (Ievins, 2023), the incapacitated body (Simon, 2012) and the paroled body (Dagan and Vannier, 2024) – the emphasis on the older prisoner's body is striking. It is made explicit through the attention given to death records, the cataloguing of illnesses and diseases, medical terminology and classifications (related to disorders and illnesses, etc.). Bodies are also predominant when studies evaluate medical parole and compassionate release. Criminologists draw extensively on medical references, sources and data in geriatrics, health and psychology.

The ageing body is also emphasised in studies of medical resources inside and outside prison, that ultimately affect how these elderly prisoners navigate the system. The importance of older prisoners’ bodies is likewise evident in discussions about their exclusion from the rest of the prison population (incapacity to leave their cells and navigate corridors, stairs, and relying on wheelchairs and lifts), or in evaluations of their adjustment to prison life (e.g. accessing education and training workshops, engaging in jobs that require a degree of physical capacity).

The corporeal nature of the sufferings of older prisoners highlights how crucial bodily integrity is for establishing and defining a moral prohibition. It is the ‘body in pain’ that helps us to identify the pains endured by others (Fassin and Bourdelais, 2005; Scarry, 1987). It is the state of the body that helps to draw that line beyond which acts, behaviours, and treatments become unacceptable. The inscription of pain on a prisoner's flesh and bones becomes a central marker for what qualifies as ‘intolerable’ treatment. The integrity of the body sets the bar beyond which the intolerable emerges.

The centrality given to the ageing body to define what qualifies as an intolerable punishment raises two main moral issues for how emotions can drive penal change. It is a certain type of body that is placed under close watch in criminological studies: the declining, deteriorating, immobile, elderly body. The weakened body reveals that the prisoner is ageing and warrants special needs and attention. This physical account of ageing places great responsibility (and burden even) on the older prisoner, who, to be recognised as ‘old’, must demonstrate the declining state of their body. This expectation reflects and entrenches ageist stereotypes. It infantilises the older prisoner, reduces them to their physical needs and erodes their agency and individuality.

Above all, the centrality of the ageing body detaches pains of ageing in prison from their causes. The emphasis given to the deteriorating body suggests that the problem is tied to the prisoner. Ageing is framed as a prisoner problem, rather than one that arises from and is produced by punitive political choices relating to sentencing inflation, and the neglectful prison regimes and environment (Vannier and Nellis, 2023). This framing of older prisoners’ pains also suggests that their state can be ‘fixed’ through increased healthcare, tailored assistance or training, and can justify measures that segregate those who are old on grounds of ‘protection’ (Lee et al., 2019).

As the contours of the declining body are sketched out through long compilations of illnesses, the prisoner who endures the various bodily collapses becomes somehow detached from their very body that is observed in detail. The older prisoner's body becomes all-encompassing. This funnelled attention loses sight of the human beings that make up prison spaces. Unlike previous criminological accounts that uncover how prisoners lose their humanity as they become equated with their sentence and offence (Ievins, 2023), studies on older prisoners reach a form of de-humanisation in which the older prisoner (the person enduring the embodied pains) is eclipsed by their own deteriorated body. The construction of the intolerable pains of older prisoners that places the body centre stage ironically drains the humanity from the study of punishment and renders these old people behind bars harder to ‘recognise’ morally and ethically as fellow humans.

Rather than uncovering the immorality of imprisoning people for excessive life-long sentences, criminological studies that characterise the pains of older prisoners as quantitatively significant, distinct and qualitatively worse offer an oddly cold and distanced repertoire of bodily degradations that emerge in, and are caused by, the carceral regime and environment. This raises a final question: is the fundamental problem really the pains tied to ageing in prison because prisoners get old? Or is the submerged issue that these older prisoners are in prison for long periods?

Conclusion

The exploration of what renders punishment ‘intolerable’ is a descriptive exercise that requires examining, classifying, and listing what are characterised as unacceptable state practices at a specific point in time by different stakeholders. It is also a normative effort that recognises and seeks to uncover the social production of a moral boundary that distinguishes acceptable state treatment from unacceptable sanctions.

This article has examined how a selection of criminological studies can contribute to building a type of intolerable punishment tied to old age, and has uncovered a framing articulated around quantity, qualitative intensity, and comparative distinctiveness. Although the fabrication of intolerable punishment is a relative, hierarchical, and instrumental exercise, the article uncovers how it bears a societal dimension and can reinforce discriminatory and reductive stereotypes around an ‘ideal’ type of older prisoner who is dependent, weak, and vulnerable and for whom compassion and pity might emerge.

In placing the older prisoner's body centre stage, finally, the criminological construction of the pains of old prisoners becomes oddly cold and distanced from the individuals who endure the pains to the point of achieving a sort of de-humanisation: the body somehow removing the humanity of carceral pains. Although caution is required in generalising this claim, the article reveals the complexity that underlies the construction of intolerable punishments in criminology. Nonetheless, it is hoped that it will inspire future research on the role of emotions in building intolerable punishments; perhaps, especially on how ‘positive’ emotions can breed penal moderation. I also hope that more attention will be paid to the connections between ageing in prison and ageing in society during this global politics of austerity, growing state disengagements from healthcare services and social care, cultural shifts around the elderly, and finally on the meaning and role of the body across the criminal justice system.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers and editorial team for their valuable feedback and guidance, which greatly contributed to the improvement of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number MR/V024876/1).

ORCID iD

Marion Vannier

Notes

Author biography

Marion Vannier is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Manchester and a UKRI Future Leader Fellow.

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The construction of intolerable punishments: On the value of documenting the pains of old prisoners

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Conceptualising the construction of intolerable punishments

Defining ‘intolerable’ punishments

Documenting the pains of imprisonment and the political power of emotions

Deconstructing the pains of older prisoners

The quantity of pains

Increasing demographic trends and unprecedented death records

The cumulation of physical and psychological pains

The quality of pain

Deteriorating and dying bodies

Carceral bodies as objects of medical analysis

Deteriorating bodies and the inadequacy of the carceral environment

The pains of ageing in prison are comparatively worse

Older prisoners versus younger prisoners: The geriatric pains of imprisonment

Older prisoners versus old people in the community

Why document the pains of older prisoners?

The reductive view of intolerable ageing in prison

Beyond prison: The pains of older prisoners as a societal concern

The ‘ideal’ older prisoner: Entrenching discriminatory stereotypes

‘Too much’ pain and corrosive emotions

The intolerable punishment of older prisoners and the all-encompassing body

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author biography

References