Geriatric carcerality: The prison and the aging crisis

We contend there exists an aging crisis in Canada's federal prison system. This aging crisis calls us to reconsider the broader socio-carceral context of what we term the geriatric carcerality of prison as an institution. We argue the intent of confinement now is to punish prisoners through the aging process, while the detriment of confinement (alongside the inadequate health care inside the prison) exacerbates the aging process, inevitably punishing prisoners beyond their sentences. We endeavour to demonstrate the multiplicity of carceral conditions at work within the modern iteration of the prison's now geriatric context, with specific focus on the current state of Canada's federal prison system. We draw upon a range of scholarship, government reports, and policy, suggesting the geriatric identity of the prison has shifted to resituate its intent, detriment and spatiality around the old age prisoner. In effect, the prison's objectives of punishment and/or rehabilitation and the purpose of prison at large must be called into question.