Pensioner crimewave marks rise of the 'Saga lout'

81-year-old Dorothy Evans was sentenced to six months in jail for multiple breaches of an Asbo in 2007. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/21/pensioner-crimewave-saga-lout


Summary:
 

New statistics show that a higher number of pensioners are being arrested and ending up in Britain’s jails. Experts do not know if crime by elderly is caused by low pensions through necessity or the tougher attitude by the courts to the elderly in the dock. In Derbyshire, for example, 260 over-65s were arrested for serious crimes in 2009 compared with 88 in 2008. So there is a rise between 15% and 25% in the numbers of pensioners being arrested. In Scotland the number of over-65s charged with drug and weapon crimes doubled in four years to 80 last year. In the Netherlands where the same rise in offending pensioners has been monitored, researchers found that a high percentage of over-60s appearing in court had undiagnosed dementia. A report by the French Centre d’Analyse Strategique said the country’s criminal system needs to be adapted to handle the growth in older criminals; police would require specific training on how to find the older criminals and the jails need to be modified for the inmates with Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses. The ageing of the population is going to lead to an automatic rise in crime by senior citizens.  

Opinion:

I think it is sad and funny that old people do crime. You would think that a pensioner can and will enjoy his pension and the rest of his life. But there are obviously still a lot of pensioners who think it is necessary to do crime. Instead of focusing of getting these people in jail I think it is important that it is figured out why they would do crime (next to the disease they may have) instead of adapting the police office and jail for the older people.