Ageing, Crime And Society

The relationship between ageing and crime has been a much neglected issue, the focus rather being on youth and crime. This book aims to redress this imbalance, bringing together a group of leading authorities to address key issues on the subject of crime and ageing. It considers older people as both victims and perpetrators of crime, and also examines the conditions faced by older prisoners.

The book draws upon both criminology and gerontology, as well as sociology and social policy, to help understand the complex but under-studied relationship that older men and women have with crime. The book seeks to re-theorize both crime and ageing to expose how violence against the aged may be normalized within families and care homes, and draws links with empirical research and the policy making process in relation to the aged as both victims and offenders.

Effective preventive strategies for both theft and violence in public and private spheres are identified, as well as bespoke programmes for older people in the criminal justice system. "Ageing, Crime and Society" makes a powerful argument for the concept of age to be added to the more familiar analytic categories of gender, race and class in relation to wider understanding of crime and penal policy.