U.S. corrections officers’ discourse about dementia

Abstract

The United States has more prisoners than any other country in the world: more than 1.5 million persons were housed in state and federal prisons in 2020. A sizeable percentage are ageing; Physician’s Weekly estimates that by 2030, people aged over 50, the age at which the incarcerated are considered to be ‘old’, will make up one-third of the U.S. prison population. That group will include a great many persons who have or are developing dementia and who are guarded by correctional officers. We can, then, consider that correctional staff as well as prisoners form an overlooked dementia care minority. Using conversation and discourse analysis, we focus on epistemic modal adverbs as discourse markers in spoken commentary by current correctional officers about prisoners with dementia, as some markers can signal an uneasiness with which they position themselves as knowledgeable about rights and duties in ageing and dementia. Officers frame their discourse to identify concerns about a prison system that deals poorly with inmate losses of cognitive ability and memory and suggest a need for additional training and support in communicating with incarcerated older prisoners who may have dementia.