The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Prison Suicide in England and Wales, 1972–87
Abstract
The case notes of 295 suicides (98.3% of the total) in prisons in England and Wales between 1972 and 1987 were studied. This period has witnessed an increase in the suicide rate far in excess of the rate of rise in the prison population. The most common method of suicide was by hanging, usually at night. There was a frequent past history of psychiatric treatment and self-injury. People charged or convicted of violent or sexual offences were over-represented, as were those serving life sentences. There was an association between suicide and both guilt for the offence and being charged or convicted of a homicide offence. Some suicides occurred many years after reception into prison. Routine enquiry about previous suicide attempts must be implemented, along with better, ongoing, active communication between staff and inmates.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 18
- Finnerty, 1981, Suicide Prevention in Correctional Facilities (Manual).
- 1988, Report by H. M. Chief Inspector of Prisons on the Risley Remand Centre.
- Gunn, 1978, Psychiatric Aspects of Imprisonment.
- Freud, 1917, Complete Psychological Works, 14
- 1985, Report of the Review of Suicide Precautions at H. M. Detention Centre and H. M. Young Offenders Institution, Glenochil.
- 10.1192/bjp.134.1.24 · DOI
- Phillips, 1986, A Study of Suicide and Attempted Suicides at HMP Brixton, 1973–1983.
- 10.1192/bjp.150.3.309 · DOI
- 1981, The Prevention of Suicide in Prison (Training Manual).
- 10.1177/0306624X8002400206 · doi:10.1177/0306624x8002400206
- 10.1192/bjp.151.2.218 · DOI
- Burtch, 1979, The Silent System: An Inquiry into Prisoners Who Suicide.
- Danto, 1973, Jail House Blues.
- 10.1177/0093854883010004005 · DOI
- 1984, Suicide in Prison. A Report by H. M. Chief Inspector of Prisons.
- 1986, Report of the Working Group on Suicide Prevention.
- Stone, 1984, Jail suicide, Corrections Today, 46, 84
- 10.1136/bmj.288.6435.1945 · DOI · Paper page
Cited by
The interpersonal theory of suicide.
Van Orden, K. A., Witte, T. K., Cukrowicz, K. C., Braithwaite, S. R., Selby, E. A., & Joiner, T. E. (2010) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/a0018697 · Cited by 5,292
“…& Turecki, 2008; Zouk, Tousignant, Seguin, Lesage, & Turecki, 2006) Incarceration (Binswanger, Stern, Deyo, Heagerty, Cheadle, Elmore, et al., 2007; Dooley, 1990; DuRand, Burtka, Federman, Haycox, & Smith, 1995; Fazel, Cartwright, Norman-Nott, & Hawton, 2008; Fruehwald, Frottier, Eher, Ritter, &…”
Psychological autopsy studies of suicide: a systematic review.
CAVANAGH, J. T. O., CARSON, A. J., SHARPE, M., & LAWRIE, S. M. (2003) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291702006943 · Cited by 2,207
Serious mental disorder in 23 000 prisoners: a systematic review of 62 surveys
Fazel, S., & Danesh, J. (2002) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(02)07740-1 · Cited by 2,201
Suicide in Prisoners: A Systematic Review of Risk Factors
Fazel, S., Cartwright, J., Norman-Nott, A., & Hawton, K. (2008) · The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry · doi:10.4088/jcp.v69n1107 · Cited by 368
Treatment needs of prisoners with psychiatric disorders.
Gunn, J., Maden, A., & Swinton, M. (1991) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.303.6798.338 · Cited by 339
Metadata
- Authors
- Dooley, E.
- Venue
- British Journal of Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Published
- 1990-01
- Volume
- 156
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 40-45
- ISSN
- 0007-1250 (ISSN-L)
- 1472-1465
- OpenAlex
- W2066927480
- Cited by
- 222
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 6.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Prison Suicide in England and Wales, 1972–87. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1192/bjp.156.1.40
- The paper
- Dooley, E. (1990). Prison Suicide in England and Wales, 1972–87. British Journal of Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.156.1.40
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
