NCJ Number
179479
Date Published
1999
Length
77 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the existing literature on inmate suicide and links this literature with current knowledge about coping with prison and the nature of the prison experience.
Abstract
Exploration of prison suicide can offer a variety of significant insights. It can help in the development of suicide prevention policy and may also aid the broader understanding of the nature of prisons. Imprisonment involves an additional strain; identifiable groups of inmates are especially susceptible to it. Discontinuities exist between the literature on adjustment to imprisonment and the literature on inmate suicides. Bringing together the separate literatures on coping, on suicide, and on the prison experience strengthens an appreciation of the distress suffered in prison and some of the reasons for it. The data reveal relatively high and increasing rates of prison suicides, particularly among sentenced inmates, and especially among inmates with life sentences. However, the profile of the suicidal inmate is incomplete and biased. Different types of prison suicide can be identified; problems of coping with various aspects of imprisonment take on special significance for some of these groups. Findings indicate that mundane or routine features of the prison world can apparently make huge demands on limited coping resources. The research on prison suicide has implications for the broader area of prison studies in terms of the neglect of prison suicide in sociological studies of prison, implications for the debate on the effects of imprisonment, the methodological issues to be learned, the unexplored links between prison suicide and criminal careers, and the significance of prison staff. Tables, figure, footnotes, and 243 references (Author abstract modified)