Older Women in the Criminal Justice System : Running Out of Time

What is life like for the women who grow old behind bars? Azrini Wahidin examines in-depth the experiences and needs of this overlooked group. What happens to the identity and mental health of these women who are closed off from the outside world and without familial networks? What does it feel like to have to carve out a new version of your private self, in a public space? Wahidin shows how ageist and sexist attitudes in criminal procedures and penal policy regulate and discipline the ageing body. She also highlights the failures of practical provisions in prisons to meet the particular needs of this group. Illuminating reading for all those working in the prison services, probation, and the courts, and an important addition to the wider criminology punishment-rehabiliation debate, Women, Old Age and the Criminal Justice System offers a rare view of what happens to the women who grow old in prison.

Azrini Wahidin is a lecturer of Criminology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent.