Title: Deprivation, importation, and prison suicide: Combined effects of institutional conditions and inmate composition - ScienceDirect
Headings: Deprivation, importation, and prison suicide: Combined effects of institutional conditions and inmate composition
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Journal of Criminal Justice
Deprivation, importation, and prison suicide: Combined effects of institutional conditions and inmate composition ☆
Abstract
Introduction
Current study
Theoretical framework
Deprivation model
Importation model
Combined models
Data and methods
Data
Analytic Strategy
Independent variables
Results
Description of the sample
Bivariate results
Results of the negative binomial regression model
Discussion and conclusions
Acknowledgements
References

Content: Based on prior research, this study hypothesized that prisons with greater proportions of White inmates, males, inmates under the age of eighteen, and prisons where a greater proportion of inmates utilized mental health services would be more likely to report suicides. This study also hypothesized that at greater levels of deprivation suicide would be more likely for these high risk groups of inmates. Relatively little is known about why suicide occurs in some prisons but not in others, and few studies have considered empirically the combination of prison features and prisoner characteristics on suicide. This study paid particular attention to the features of prison environment predictive of suicide, how the inmate composition of prisons was related to suicide, and the combined effect of prison and prisoner characteristics on the likelihood of suicide. For these reasons, this article represents an important contribution to the literature on prison suicide. Theoretical framework
Deprivation model
The deprivation model, based on the classic work of Clemmer, 1940, Goffman, 1961, Sykes, 1958, holds that mal-adaptation to prison (e.g., violence, aggression, anxiety, depression, distress, and suicide) is a product of the restrictive, or “total,” prison milieu and other “pains of imprisonment.” That is, conditions of the prison such as deprivations of security, autonomy, liberty, and goods and services, produce aggressive or self-destructive behavior ( Sykes 1958 ). Contemporary prisons in the United States range in the levels of deprivation and the extent to which inmates are “cut off from society,” evidenced by Farrington's (1992) description of the “not-so-total institution” to the increased use of supermaximum security units and prisons ( Shalev, 2009 ). The ways inmates adapt to these conditions also varies. Deprivations may increase individual opposition (i.e., violence or