While the Prison Service copes with a 25 per cent cut in funding, the number of prisoners over 60 doubled to 4,000 over the last ten years.
The increase, partly a result of widespread prosecutions of historic sex crimes, now means that prison officials, used to retraining violent young men, now spend much of their time escorting inmates to cancer screenings and chemotherapy sessions in local hospitals.
Source: Financial Times, 26th October 2015.