This research, using data from the Community Criminal Courts where a majority of elderly offenders are tried and sentenced, investigates the socio-economic profile of elderly offenders and the factors influencing their criminal motivation in Singapore. It revisits conceptualizations of offending in older age which until now has received scant attention even in Asian societies where ties to conventional institutions are thought to be “protective.” The majority of elderly offenders in this study were “revolving door prisoners” and were never in possession of any efficacious social capital that would have prevented them from committing a crime or enabled their re-entry process, a problem compounded by the study’s findings that almost 70% of the sampled offenders had experienced mental health issues. This would have spelled adverse consequences for their desistance and, conversely, their recidivist behavior, a finding that was consistent with many other studies that had examined the association between psychosis and crime.

这项研究使用来自社区刑事法院的数据，大多数老年罪犯在此受审和判刑，调查了新加坡老年罪犯的社会经济状况以及影响他们犯罪动机的因素。它重新审视了老年犯罪的概念化，即使在与传统机构的联系被认为是“保护性”的亚洲社会中，这种概念迄今为止也很少受到关注。本研究中的大多数老年罪犯是“旋转门囚犯”，他们从未拥有任何有效的社会资本来阻止他们犯罪或使他们能够重新进入程序，研究结果使这个问题更加复杂，几乎70% 的抽样罪犯经历过心理健康问题。