The number of elderly men in the prisons of England and Wales has grown significantly during the past decade and continues to rise. Based on intensive fieldwork in four English prisons, this article explores the prison experiences of menaged 65+ years. Some of these menhave grownold in prison, some have served previous prison sentences, and others (the majority) have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment in later life. The latter had no prior experience of imprisonment. This article is concerned primarily with what is termed institutional thoughtlessness—the ways in which prison regimes (routines, rules, time-tables, etcetera) simply roll on with little reference to the needs and sensibilities of the old. This article argues that some degree of institutional thoughtlessness is evident in most of the prisons of England and Wales. Drawing on interviews and sustained observations, the article discusses some of the impacts of this thoughtlessness on imprisoned, elderly men.

This article explores how prison officers manage and perform emotion on a day-to-day basis.Although the performance of emotion is invariably highlighted when things "go wrong" in prison -perhaps particularly during prison disturbances -the emotional life of prisons at an everyday level has received much less attention. Moreover, although the sociology of the prison has acknowledged the impact of prison on the emotional lives of prisoners there has been much less interest in the emotional impact of the prison on its uniformed staff. This paper focuses on the day-to-day emotional interaction that arises out of the predicament of imprisonment; that is, on how prison officers" emotions are structured and performed on a daily basis. Prisons are emotional places, but like all organisations, they have their own `feeling rules` about the kinds of emotions it is appropriate for prison officers to express (and indeed feel) at work. In consequence, working in prisons demands a performative attitude on the part of staff, an (often significant) engagement in emotion-work and, relatedly, the employment of various emotion-work strategies.

The numbers of elderly men in the prisons of England and Wales has grown significantly over the past decade, and they continue to rise. Based on intensive fieldwork in four English prisons, this article explores the prison experiences of men aged 65 years and over. Some of our interviewees had grown old in prison, some had served previous prison sentences and others (the majority) had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment in later life. These men had no prior experience of imprisonment. We are concerned in this article with the impacts of imprisonment on this prisoner group, and with the 'hidden injuries' generated by the prison regime and environment. Prisoners in this age group have to date received little research attention, and scant acknowledgement in policy debates in the United Kingdom. We will argue that those impacts may be magnified, in practical ways, by this inattention.

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