The Ageing of Prisoner’s Population as a New Challenge for the Prison Service in Poland

Abstract

Old age is a special stage in a person’s life, one that involves numerous changes in people’s functioning. These changes concern various areas of human life: physical, mental and social, and affect the future situation of the person. Old age, even though it affects all people, is an individu­alized process and proceeds it in a different way. It is a consequence of the current life and activity of the individual, but is conditioned by emerging additional factors, such as diseases. Elderly people are an extremely valuable element of society, which is why it becomes necessary to support them and help them lead a dignified life. This support becomes particularly important in relation to seniors serving sentences of imprisonment. This group, although growing in the most dynamic way in the prisoner population, is usually marginalised and overlooked in the case of creating penitentiary programmes or developing methods of working with prisoners.The purpose of this article is to show the situation of senior age convicts. In the following parts of the text, the diversity of the senior prisoners’ community and the course of the aging process in the conditions of isolation were discussed. The paper closes with indications and postulates about working with elderly people.

Keywords

• starość
• więźniowie
• resocjalizacja
• praca z osadzonymi seniorami
• służba więzienna