Australia’s prison population is ageing, and the health burden is much higher for older prisoners says CEPAR Associate Investigator Dr Natasha Ginnivan in her recent paper 'The rising health, social and economic costs of Australia’s ageing prisoner population', published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
In their paper, Dr Ginnivan and her co-authors show that Australia's older prison population is rising due to changes to laws in the 1990s, better forensics techniques leading to cold case prosecutions and increased rates of people with dementia, for which criminal behaviour can be a symptom. The researchers say Australia needs a more systematic and coordinated approach to manage the ageing prison population.
Natasha A Ginnivan, Tony G Butler and Adrienne N Withall
Med J Aust 2018; 209 (10): 422-424. || doi: 10.5694/mja18.00266
Organisation/s: The Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), The University of New South Wales