Capital crimes: Suicides in jail

Suicide in jails is a growing public health problem. It is growing because the suicide rate among young men has increased sharply in the last 20 years and because the recent historic increases in the U.S. rate of jail incarceration have put more and more men, young and old, behind bars. This article reviews the empirical studies resulting from the new attention given jail-suicide research and prevention in the last decade. The author argues that the findings of this literature need to be treated with great caution. The second part of the article considers explanations of the greater risks for completed suicides in jail. The causes for the high rate of jail suicide must lie in the types of people who find themselves in jail (“importation” explanations) or in what jails are like (“deprivation” explanations). A large number of the risk factors for completed and attempted suicide in the general population are overrepresented among jail populations, and the article reviews some of these risk factors. Although this importation case has merit, it is only a partial explanation for the high rate of jail suicide. In contradiction to the assumptions of stricter importation theorists, newer, non-suicide-related research on jail populations has strongly indicated that some part of the elevated rates of inmate distress may be attributed to the effects of exposure to jail environments. The author concludes that new studies notwithstanding, the empirical research base on jail suicide remains very limited. Several avenues for new investigations are suggested.