Just curiosity.
How many people have lived in the public prison system most of their life (more than 50%) and lived over 100 years ? Maybe a comparison between the countries, I would assume that Iraq, Russia and China don’t have the best of records, compared to Sweden, Netherland, etc.
What was the longest term served by a person ?
Was anyone ever executed when over 100 years of age ?
Who was the oldest person to ever go to prison (any country) ?
Not in the U.S. In a quick scan of the Espy file that I downloaded last year, the oldest I see is Adonijah Bailey, who was 79 when he was hanged for murder in 1824 in Connecticut. Ages are only sometimes listed until the 20th century, but I really doubt anyone was over 100.
I believe you can still download the Espy file at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=8&did=269 but it’s a very large document.
Paul Geidel holds the American record by having served 68 years and 245 days (from 1912 to 1980). In the same prison where I work coincidentally, although I didn’t know him.
In the UK, our nationalk health system allocates resources to GPs based partly upon the age profile of their practice.
One major point in this allocation system is when a person reaches 60, at which age more resources are allocated per patient, so that a GP in say Eastbourne which has a large number of retirees, gets the resources to work effectively.
In the UK prison system, this age related increase in resources is 50, and it is genreally held that prisoners are effectively 10 to 15 years older biologically than those who have never been incarcerated.
I was reading an article in the UK prisone service own publication, the Prison Service News
http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/library/dynpage.asp?Page=60
Although I cannot find the article here since the article was printed in 2003 which is not listed, that article stated that the head of prions medical services was pleased with medical service improvements over the last couple of years, but that since the incidence of long term drug abuse was very much greater now than in the past, and that drug users were starting from very early teens, the lilklehood was that this age trigger point for increased healthcare resources would probably need to be reduced.
There was no speculation what the new trigger point would need to be, but from personal experience I’d say that drug using prisoners are at least 20 years older than their chronological age, and in some cases even more.
This would mean that the longest terms served even by ‘whole life tariff’ prisoners will not be as long as in the past.
Some numbers of past prisoners,
Tower of London - Longest serving prisoner Sir William de la Pole served 37 years between 1502-1539.
John Hilton - Has served 42 years so far.
Ian Brady - Has served 38 years to date.
One problem is that when you look around for information on this matter, there are no fugures available for those who have served many years for differant prison sentences.
I have one inmate in my workshop who has been coming to jail regualarly since 1966, he has served around 30 years al, in bits, he will most likely die in prison for some petty offence, but he has some time to go before then, so who know how many years he will finallly accumulate.
A rather well-known example of a longtime prisoner was Rudolf Hess, an important Nazi party official and one of the most influential figures in the Third Reich. In 1941, he undertook a solo flight to Britain, the purpose of which is still heavily debated among historians. The British arrested him and returned him to Germany after the end of the war to be tried by the Nuremberg war crime tribunal. In 1946, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he actually served in a prison in Spandau near Berlin until his death in 1987.