If you are forced to live alone in your old age, would you prefer to go to prison to relieve the loneliness?
It may be hard to believe, but an elderly woman in Japan did it.
Yes indeed the elderly woman deliberately broke the law so that she could go to jail and live with others.
The incident took place in Tochigi, Japan's largest prison for women, located north of Tokyo.
There are 500 women inmates in this jail and one in five women is elderly.
The jail staff allows elderly inmates basic activities while there is also a nursing home for them.
81-year-old woman Akiyo (full name withheld) was sentenced to prison for 2 thefts.
As a result, she developed an unexpected desire to spend life behind bars.
"There are very good people in the prison and my life is better there," she said.
The first time he was sentenced to prison after the age of 60 and the second time he deliberately did it when the pension money she received could not meet the needs, so she stole food to get to the prison.
"I made a bad decision and shoplifted, I thought it was not a big crime, if I was financially stable I would never have done it," she added.
She was not getting any support from her family either.
Before her prison sentence, she was living with her 43-year-old son, who often wished her mother would leave the house.
Akiyo said that 'I thought that my son didn't care about me, I thought that there was no point in living anymore or let's say I wanted to die'.
She was released from jail in October 2024 but she was afraid that her son would not accept her and living alone would be difficult for her and her fear was proved right and she is living alone.
