Elderly account for 20 per cent of all Japan’s crime — and it’s turning prisons into nursing homes
Japanese government setting aside US$500,000 for more nursing staff at the county’s prisons
Japan’s petty thieves aren’t all miscreant teens and wayward adolescents. They’re grandparents.
The share of crimes committed by the elderly in Japan has risen dramatically in recent years. According to 2015 data from the National Police Agency, 5.8 per cent of arrests in 2005 involved people 65 years or older. Within the decade, that rate had risen to 20 per cent, the AFP reports.
As more of these senior citizens get locked up, experts say, the more Japan’s prisons are turning into nursing homes.
With increasing numbers of older citizens getting locked up, their needs are beginning to dominate prison staff members’ day-to-day responsibilities. Personnel are required to help senior inmates bathe, get changed, and clean up after themselves.
“It’s a problem that the work of prison officers is becoming more like nursing care,” Justice Ministry official Shinsuke Nishioka told the AFP.
The spike in petty crime (mostly shoplifting) can be traced to a number of factors, researcher Yuki Shinko recently told NPR. Increasingly, the elderly populations feel lonely, bored, and unafraid of the legal ramifications. Many have even come to see prison as an upgrade from their daily lives.
“If you are arrested, you still get a roof over your head, you’re fed three times a day and you get health check-ups. So it’s sort of a win-win situation either way,” Shinko told NPR.