The rise of vulnerable older adult offenders in Japan - a warning for the west

Older Japanese woman

Older adults in Japan are increasingly caught in a cycle of poverty, crime, and incarceration. Dr Jason Danely explores why.

Dr Jason Danely, Reader in Anthropology and Chair of the Healthy Ageing and Care (HAC) Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange (RIKE) Network, has been conducting research on the criminalisation of impoverished older adults in Japan since 2016. In September 2024, the book he wrote on this subject, titled Unsettled Futures: Old Age and Carceral Circuits in Japan will be published by Vanderbilt University Press. The research for the book was supported by a small grant from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Social Science Research Council Abe Fellowship.

Dr Danely has been conducting research on various topics related to ageing and care in Japan over the last twenty years. Japan is the 'oldest' nation in the world (with the exception of Monaco), with almost 30% of its population aged 65 or older. However, Japanese society has been slow to integrate this huge and heterogeneous older adult population into social life beyond their roles in family. 

The long term care and social welfare system for frail and dependent older people relies heavily on the direct involvement of family members. By focusing on older ex-offenders, Dr Danely’s work reveals the consequences of this system in times of demographic, economic and social change.

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates of any industrialised country, and in contrast to the UK, the total number of incarcerated individuals in Japan has been steadily declining for decades. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, when the proportion of older people both in the total population and in prisons, was close to that of England today, things began to change. 

Over the next twenty years, the proportion of older people in the population would increase by 50%, but the older prison population would increase by 500%. Alarming reports announced that prisons had become ‘just like care homes’, while others found that older people were habitually reoffending in order to be cared for in prison rather than live alone or with family in the community. Danely looks at this through the lens of carceral circuits, that keep certain groups like older disabled and impoverished people, excluded, surveilled, and under state control, whether in or out of detention facilities.

For his research, Dr Danely spent five months in Tokyo, working primarily with three different non-profit organisations that provide support to marginalised and impoverished groups, including older people leaving prison. 

Dr Danely’s ethnographic fieldwork involved spending time immersed in the lives of older ex-offenders, accompanying them at the supermarket or a visit to the GP, attending church, watching television, or sleeping in a homeless shelter. They range from a grandmother who had been to prison a dozen times for pickpocketing, to a former gangster, now living with dementia, whose criminal record included manslaughter.

In each case, Dr Danely’s research reveals a rich and complex life story that could not be reduced to a list of crimes. Each story shows how easy it was for older people to fall through the gaps in the social safety net, and how difficult it was to escape the carceral circuit and settle into a meaningful life.

While it is difficult to point to any single policy or legal change that has led to the rapid increase in older adult offenders, Dr Danely hopes his book will bring attention to the voices of vulnerable older people in Japan and serve as a warning for other countries like the UK, which lacks a robust plan for its own ageing prison population.

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Dr Jason Danely

Reader in Anthropology of Japan

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Related information

For more, see Dr Danely’s other works: