Adelina Iftene, Punished for Aging: Vulnerability, Rights, and Access to Justice in Canadian Penitentiaries
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520915755 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Adelina Iftene, Punished for Aging: Vulnerability, Rights, and Access to Justice
in Canadian Penitentiaries, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, CA,
2019; 264 pp. (inclusive of index). ISBN: 9781487524289, $85.00 CAN
(hbk), also available as paperback and e-book
In Punished for Aging: Vulnerability, Rights, and Access to Justice in Canadian
Penitentiaries, Adelina Iftene amplifies the little-heard voices of aging inmates
incarcerated in Canadian penitentiaries. Those voices came from 197 interviews
with inmates aged 50 years and older and in seven federal penitentiaries in
Ontario—Canada’s largest province—including one maximum, four medium
and two minimum security institutions. Iftene overlays those voices with compact,
yet clear, analysis of the policy and legal context in which punishment is admin-
istered, attending specifically to how inmates experienced the process of aging
whilst subjected to the techniques and forms of incarceration.
The voices relayed by Iftene are from public prisons; Canada does not have
privately administered prisons. These inmates are the responsibility of a federal
governmental agency, Correctional Services Canada (CSC), whose penitentiaries
hold individuals convicted of offences under Canada’s Criminal Code and
sentenced for two years or more in custody. These federal penitentiaries are
found across Canada and administered by regional offices of the CSC.
The Commissioner of Corrections heads the CSC and is ultimately responsible
for all policies and administration within these penitentiaries, including the provi-
sion of health care—the Commissioner carries out these functions independent of
Cabinet’s direction. The Commissioner’s authority is sourced in Canada’s
Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) and Corrections and
Conditional Release Regulations (CCRR), which give shape to the institutional
boundaries of—including opportunities of egress from—this carceral space.
Iftene describes the federal system of penitentiaries early and continues to supple-
ment this description throughout the book, immersing the reader with the
unfamiliar, black box that is Canada’s prison system. This treatment ensures
that the reader is aware of the context in which inmates’ experiences are emplaced,
allowing the reader, irrespective of their familiarity with the jurisdiction or topic,
to follow Iftene’s analysis with ease.
With the benefit of this context, Iftene refers primarily to two case studies—Eric
and John—and otherwise quotes from other anonymized interviewees to tell “the
story of the interplay between aging and imprisonment through the eyes of those
who have experienced it” (p. 8). Eric and John, in particular, are illustrative of two
distinct experiences of aging in prison—an older individual incarcerated later in
life, and an individual who had been incarcerated for decades by the time of the
interview; their stories are used to represent, in narrative form, the themes that
emerged from Iftene’s interviews. Notably, Iftene tells us that inmates recounted
an inflexible built environment and social infrastructure designed for younger
Book Reviews 563
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