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33 How. J. Crim. Just. 1 (1994)

handle is hein.journals/hjcj33 and id is 1 raw text is: @ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA The Howard Journal Vol 33 No 1. Feb 94 ISSN 0265-5527 Suicide Amongst Women Prisoners ALISON LIEBLING Senior Research Associate, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge Abstract: The rate of suicide amongst women prisoners is seriously underestimated. The relatively small numbers of women in prison often leads to the neglect of their specific needs and concerns. Their suicide rate in prison has been increasing. Women prisoners talk about family and child-care concerns more often than male prisoners do. There may also be other reasons for their greater vulnerability in prison. It may be that the fact of imprisonment has a different and more specfic impact on women than upon men. The subjective, qualitative aspects of the prison experience are rarely investigated. As a result, the pains of imprisonment are tragically underestimated. During the last 20 years in England and Wales there have been 14 consciously self-inflicted deaths by women in prison. Five of these deaths have occurred in the last five years; two of them since June 1992. The effects of these deaths on families, on the staff who have worked closely with the women concerned, and on their fellow prisoners, are devastating. The Myth of the 'Mainly Male' Prison Suicide Problem Because of the relatively small numbers of women in prison, the absolute numbers of suicides might at first sight seem small: one or two each year, compared to almost 40 male prisoner suicides each year. Despite a growing awareness of and concern about suicides in prison in recent years, there has been as assumption that this problem overwhelmingly concerns men. This assumption is reflected in the fact that none of the official publications relating to suicides in prison published in the last decade have referred in any detail to women (Home Office 1984, 1986; Lloyd 1990; Tumim 1990). Instead, it is argued that one of the most significant factors associated with suicide risk is being male (Home Office 1986). Most studies use all-male samples. In fact, there are specific and important features of suicide by women prisoners that should not be overlooked in any investigation of the problem. The first and most important point is that the suicide rate for women prisoners is as high as the rate for men. This fact has been masked even in the most recent studies by suicide verdicts being used as the official measure of the actual number of suicides occurring. This is no longer a plausible baseline for the calculation of suicide rates. Official 1

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