Singen, Germany (dpa) – The courtyard has an almost idyllic look to it – park benches grouped around a patch of greensward with shrubs and a fishpond and a playing field nearby.
A glance at the tall enclosure walls with their surveillance cameras perched aloft makes it clear though that this is no cosy old people’s home. It is Germany’s sole prison for the elderly located on Lake Constance in the far south. The prisoners here are all men aged between 50 and 60 years old.This section of the Constance Penitentiary (JVA) is more open than other prisons. “Closed on the outside, open on the inside,” that’s the concept behind this building built in 1970, said prison governor Thomas Maus.Between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. inmates are allowed to use the courtyard, the cells are only kept locked from 10 p.m. until 7 in the morning. The prisoners are encouraged to help organize the day’s activities since the aim is to keep them physically and mentally on their toes. After all, when they get outside these elderly men are supposed to be able to cope on their own.“The elderly inmate has special needs,” said Werner Pleiss, deputy director of the JVA Constance. “In normal detention, where younger inmates have most of the say, older prisoners are often neglected.”Maus is convinced that “older people need more people with whom they can relate”. In Singen, 18 warders share the work of looking after their charges with a staff of volunteer helpers. Inmates are allowed six hours of visits a month – more than in a normal jail – and the counsellors maintain close contacts to relatives. “We know the families,” said Pleiss.A wide range of leisure activities should take prisoners’ minds off their sentences. Along with a library and a fitness room there are circles of board game and card players, conversation groups and cooking courses.The re-socialization programme is augmented by a whole catalogue of de-restrictive measures granted on a discretionary basis depending on a person’s sentence and behavioural performance.There are walks with prison warders, shopping trips, visits to the swimming baths or even a brief trip home. Those able to make themselves useful can do light assembly or packing jobs or else help out in the kitchens or with cleaning duties.The Singen inmates come from all classes of society. Many are sex offenders with a high proportion of violent criminals and fraudsters. The oldest person locked up here is 75 years old. Around a third of Singen inmates have spent a third of their lives behind bars. The remaining two-thirds got into trouble with the law for the first time in their later years.There has been little research into why people who have led blameless lives for years, at least as far as the law is concerned, should suddenly turn to crime, said Werner Greve of the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute.It’s something that even experts can only speculate about. In some cases people’s lives have just lost their sparkle, in others there is genuine financial hardship or else physical and mental deterioration.Old people tend to be seen as victims rather than criminals, said Greve and the proportion of older people involved in crime is statistically lower.By examining police crime figures from 1997, the researcher discovered that people aged over 60 perpetrate only 5.3 per cent of all crimes, half of which are shoplifting offences. Only 2.4 per cent of violent crime is attributed to the elderly.In Singen violent criminals account for around a quarter of the inmates.“A long sentence has a much larger impact on older people,” said Pleiss. They see their lives coming to an end and realize that time is running out. The petty freedoms they enjoy behind bars are only a small compensation.
