Prison and Health Discussion 1 — Aging in Prison: Time, Pain, and Struggle

Texts

Aging Behind Prison Walls: Studies in Trauma and Resilience (2021) by Tina Maschi and Keith Morgen

Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance (1999) by Leonard Peltier

“I’m now just over fifty-four years old. I’ve been in here since I was thirty-one. I’ve been told I must live two lifetimes plus seven years before I get out of prison on my scheduled release date in the year 2041.”

- Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings (1999)

In The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir notes that, unlike the shift from adolescence to adulthood, “the time at which old age begins is ill-defined; it varies according to the era and the place, and nowhere do we find any initiation ceremonies that confirm the fresh status.” Over the last few decades, overcoming such ambiguity has become a priority for prison administrators and policymakers. For these parties, the functional definition of “the older prisoner” is one aged 50 or above — a number that “reflects the poorer health outcomes amongst prisoners compared to the wider community.” This conception of “the older prisoner” imagines a subject of ill health, one who is likely to experience “chronic disease and/or terminal illness… reduced levels of mobility, disability, loss of independence and cognitive impairments” and who exists as a class apart from other incarcerated individuals.

In the first session of ‘Bridges Inside: Prison and Health,’ we will examine how “old age” is conceptualised in prison by turning to texts that provide alternative accounts of aging. The session will begin with a discussion on Aging Behind Prison Walls by Tina Maschi and Keith Morgan, an interdisciplinary study of trauma, resilience, and older prisoner’s experiences that aims to understand the phenomena of mass aging in prison and create a program for ‘caring justice.’ The second part of the discussion will bring these ideas into conversation with Prison Writings, the part-memoir, part-manifesto of Leonard Peltier, a (formerly) incarcerated Indigenous American activist and writer. In his book, Peltier unsettles the prison’s definitions of age, health, and time by invoking the Sun Dance in his transcendent account of struggle and confinement.

All readings are available on our website under the ‘Resources’ tab.