Would you prefer going to prison to escape loneliness in old age? It might sound hard to believe, but an elderly woman in Japan did exactly that.
In a surprising incident at Tochigi, Japan’s largest women’s prison located north of Tokyo, an elderly woman deliberately broke the law just to live with others behind bars. The prison houses 500 female inmates, and one in every five women there is elderly.
The prison staff allows older inmates to engage in basic activities, and there’s even a nursing home available for them. Among these inmates is Akiyo (full name not disclosed), an 81-year-old woman who was imprisoned twice for theft. This led her to develop an unexpected desire to live behind bars.
“There are very nice people in prison, and my life is better there,” Akiyo shared. She first served time after turning 60, and the second time, she deliberately committed theft when her pension couldn’t cover her basic needs. To secure a place in prison, she stole food.
“I made a wrong decision and stole from a shop,” she explained. “I didn’t think it was a big crime. If I were financially stable, I would never have done it.” She also received no support from her family.
Before her imprisonment, Akiyo lived with her 43-year-old son, who often expressed his desire for her to leave the house. “I felt like my son didn’t care about me. I thought there was no point in living anymore—or you could say, I wanted to die,” she confessed.
Akiyo was released from prison in October 2024, but she feared her son wouldn’t accept her back. Her fears proved correct, and she continues to live in isolation, finding life outside prison much harder than behind bars.
