Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Review of Recent Research on Suicides in Prison

By contrast with the attention that jail suicide has received in the last decade, suicide among longer-term prisoners has occasioned little public concern and less scholarly interest. This article reviews recent empirical studies of prison suicides, whose results call into question the conventional belief that longer-term prisoners rarely kill themselves. These studies suggest that completed suicide in prison is a serious public health problem, and that for certain sub-groups, the risks of completed suicide approach, and perhaps exceed those of jail detainees. Recent research bears out the connection between outward-turned aggression and suicide, and raises doubts about conventional conceptions of the anti-social personality. The implications for future suicide rates of the “graying” of the prison population, and of the AIDS epidemic within prisons are discussed, as are the needs for future research.