Inmate Ethnicity and the Suicide Connection - A Note on Aggregate Trends

• NCJ Number: 91665
• Journal: Prison Journal Volume: 63 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring/Summer 1983) Pages: 91-99
• Author(s): R H Anson
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper seeks to determine the presence of ethnic correlates of State rates of inmate suicide by drawing on previous findings of prison physicians and by translating the ethnicity argument at the individual level of analysis into an analysis of 51 State prison systems.

Abstract

The literature on inmate suicides has consistently observed that inmate ethnicity is related to the probability that a given prisoner will commit suicide. The results presented in this study attempt to extend this generalization to aggregate data in performing correlation analysis on portions of the 1981 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Numbers of white, black, Hispanic, Indian, and Oriental prisoners in each State prison system and Washington, D.C. (N=51) were recorded and converted into percentages of the average inmate population. Bulk suicide rates were obtained by dividing the number of suicides in each State by the total number of inmates in each prison system. Data taken from one time period suggest that the strong relationship between ethnicity and suicide uncovered in the psychiatric literature has limited explanatory power when converted into the proportions of black, white, Hispanic, Oriental, and Indian inmates within each State prison system. Correlations between the proportions of white or black inmates and suicide rates were in predicted directions and lend supporting evidence to data from official inmate records. State penal systems with comparatively large proportions of white prisoners have higher suicide rates. Conversely, heavy concentrations of black inmates lower the probability that States will experience high suicide rates. The generally negative relationship between the number and percent of Hispanic inmates and suicide rates is in a direction opposite from that expected from the literature. Methodological issues are discussed, and 27 bibliographic entries and tabular data are provided.