History of The Concept
The First Annual Conference on Elderly Criminals took place in 1982 in Albany, New York. This, along with the dates of a number of investigations into the issues surrounding aging offenders, highlights the issue as one that has come to notice only recently. This is mainly a result of general views of criminologists that age has no impact on offending, and that offenders tail off as age increases. this issue is also compounded due to the vague definition of the term "old" in a quantitative state.
Early investigations in 1984 were the earliest into links between age and crime, investigating rates of murder, abuse and theft through different age ranges. Concerns over differing sentences for those of different ages were also raised. Criminal Justice System officials of Maryland in the United States recorded a rise in the percentage of inmates over 55 from 4.9% to 6.8% between 1990 and 1997, and in 2001 Maryland predicted that 225,000 elderly offenders would be incarcerated by 2005. Again by 2001, the National Institute of Corrections recorded that 23 of the 50 Departments of Corrections across the US provided for elderly inmates.
Read more about this topic: Aging Offender
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