Summary
Japan faces a growing crisis as elderly women increasingly commit minor crimes to secure imprisonment, where they find stability, companionship, meals, and healthcare.
Between 2003 and 2022, the number of female prisoners aged 65+ quadrupled. Many, like 81-year-old Akiyo, cite poverty, loneliness, and abandonment as reasons for resorting to crime.
Over 80% of elderly female inmates are jailed for theft.
Japan’s government is introducing programs to support elderly reintegration and reduce repeat offenses, but gaps in caregiving, housing, and healthcare make prison a refuge for many.
The same capitalist logic that explains the loss of splitscreen multiplayer videogames pretty much applies across the entire socioeconomic sphere.
The ideal consumer-worker is an isolated one that must be concerned with getting their own products, transportation, goods, and services in order to continue participating in society, and must struggle on their own to find a means to pay for those requirements that never seems to be quite enough.
Why sell one thing people can share and pass on when you could sell multiple licenses for disposable things tied to users’ individual identities? Then we just gotta convince everyone that a “Real Adult” ™ has their own personal everything.
It’s also amusing how, at the same time, capitalists love to pearl-clutch about the erosion of the family unit, and blame it on some kind of perceived moral ills, when they’re actively forcing everyone to constantly be at their jobs.
Jobs always seem to be at the cost of our humanity, and we keep getting coerced to give them more of ourselves than we ought.