(Adnkronos) – They are lonely, often in financial difficulty. So much so that they would be willing to pay to stay in prison. Because here they receive regular meals, free health care, the company they lack outside. It happens in Japan’s largest women’s prison, Tochigi, north of Tokyo. Cnn tells the story, which was granted, a very rare event, to enter the detention center. Whose cells are full of elderly women, perhaps behind bars for minor offenses such as stealing food from the supermarket. The guards tell that the most acute problem is that of loneliness.
So much so, said Takayoshi Shiranaga, an officer at Tochigi Women’s Prison, that “there are even people who say they would pay 20,000 or 30,000 yen ($130-190, ed) a month if they could live here forever.” And “there are people who come here because it’s cold or because they’re hungry,” Shiranaga added. Furthermore, anyone who gets sick ”can receive free medical care while in prison, but once out they have to pay for it out of their own pocket, so some want to stay here as long as possible”. Across Japan, the number of inmates aged 65 and over has nearly quadrupled from 2003 to 2022. “Now we have to change their diapers, help them bathe, eat,” Shiranaga said. “At this point, it looks more like a nursing home than a prison full of convicted criminals,” he added.
Within the light pink walls and eerily serene hallways of Tochigi Prison, CNN met Akiyo, a pseudonym for an 81-year-old inmate. “There are very good people in this prison,” she said. “Maybe this life is the most stable for me.” A 51-year-old inmate, a pseudonym Yoko, has been incarcerated on drug charges five times in the past 25 years. Every time she returns, the prison population seems to be getting older, she told CNN. Some people ”commit crimes on purpose to get arrested and end up back in jail once they run out of money,” she said.
Theft is by far the most common crime committed by elderly inmates in Japan, especially among women. In 2022, more than 80% of elderly female inmates across the country were in prison for theft, according to Tokyo government data. Some do it to survive. 20% of people over 65 in Japan live in poverty, according to the OECD, compared to an average of 14.2% in the organization’s 38 member countries. Others do it because they have so little on the outside.
Japanese authorities are aware of the problem, so much so that the Welfare Ministry stated in 2021 that elderly inmates who received support after leaving prison were far less likely to reoffend than those who did not. Since then, the ministry has stepped up early intervention efforts and community support centers to better assist vulnerable seniors.
The Ministry of Justice has also launched programs for female inmates, to help them live independently. That is how to recover from drug addiction and how to manage family relationships. The Tokyo government is also considering proposals to make housing subsidies accessible to more seniors. There are 10 municipalities across Japan that are testing initiatives to support seniors without close relatives. All this while in Japan the elderly population is increasing so rapidly that by 2040 the country will need 2.72 million social-healthcare workers. The government is trying to encourage more people to enter the sector and to ‘import’ foreign workers.
