Characteristics and management of prisoners at risk of suicide behaviour

Abstract

This study provides data on the characteristics and management of all prisoners identified at risk of suicidal behaviour over a 12 month period in all Scottish prisons. From a total of 44,093 admissions, 1.984 (4.5%) prisoners were identified at time of reception as 'at risk' while 857 (1.9%) inmates were classified as 'at risk' at some other point during custody. Of those identified 'at risk' at time of reception, 19.1% were retained on suicidal supervision, while 58.2% of those identified 'at risk' during custody were maintained on some form of suicidal supervision. Average length of time kept on strict suicidal supervision for those identified at time of reception was 1.87 days, and for those identified at some other point during custody was 2.59 days. Results are discussed in relation to the problems associated with suicide prediction and prevention in prison settings and the tendency for risk assessment to create significant numbers of false positives at time of reception.

Self-harm among UK female prisoners: a cross-sectional study

“…Given the association between suicide attempts and completed suicide (Hawton et al, 1998), one has to assume that the risk of suicide in this sample was also high. Power and Moodie (1997), in a Scottish mixed gender prison sample, found that just over 1% of their sample openly talked about suicide on reception and about 0.5% did so at a later time during their imprisonment. Shaw et al (2004) reported that 16% of prisoners who later committed suicide had disclosed thoughts of selfharm or suicide at the reception screening.…”

“…The lower figures in these studies may reflect a reluctance of prisoners to disclose such thoughts to prison staff and the different gender composition of the samples. Furthermore, Power and Moodie (1997) focussed specifically on suicidal thoughts rather than any self-harming behaviour. Other studies (Dooley, 1990;Power & Moodie, 1997;Singleton et al, 1998) using the broader concept of self-harm have found similarly high figures as our study with some suggestion of higher rates of such behaviours in women compared to men.…”

Suicidality and the state-trait debate on problem solving deficits: A re-examination with incarcerated young offenders

“…It has been suggested that being placed on suicidal supervision while incarcerated does not necessarily indicate that an inmate is suicidal, but rather that they are displaying difficulties in coping with routine prison life (Liebling, 1992). Concern has been rising in recent years that inmates identified as at suicidal risk by prison staff comprise a large proportion of false positives (Power & Moodie, 1997), however this reflects the high level of staff concern in response to the rising number of inmate suicides observed in Britain in recent years (Home Office, 1984, 1986Lloyd, 1990;Scottish Home and Health Department, 1985). Thus there appears to be a number of reasons why an inmate may be placed on suicidal supervision, making the disentaglement of suicidal ideation and intention difficult.…”

Factors associated with self-harm in community-based young offenders: the importance of psychological variables

“…This mirrors the conclusion of Power and Moodie (1997) that due to the large number of offenders classified as 'at risk of self-harm' on the basis of typically used background factors, attempts to identify those who will self-harm using such risk factors is likely to be unworkable at the individual level. Current mood disorder has also been shown to be particularly important in assessing self-harm risk in a US juvenile delinquent sample (Wasserman & McReynolds, 2006).…”

“…This could mean that there is likely to be an observable 'ceiling effect' for these factors in young offenders which could have serious implications for their predictive utility in this group. This may mean that identifying psychological factors, which can discriminate individual vulnerability, may be more useful, as has been argued in studies of self-harming offenders in custody (Bonner & Rich, 1990;Cooper & Berwick, 2001;Power & Moodie, 1997). Hence, here the aim was to examine the prevalence of both psychological and other risk factors in community young offenders who self-harm compared to young offenders who do not report self-harm.…”