Corrections_Today_March_April_2020_Volume 82, Number 2

NIJ Update

Suicide prevention As university researchers already working with a state corrections department motivated to address the suicides that they too perceived as a growing problem, we asked the MADOC for more information. We thought we might see an identifiable pattern among the data they pro- vided. We were surprised when there wasn’t anything obvious. The offi- cers who had died between 2010 and 2015 included both men and women, roughly proportional to their repre- sentation in the workforce (which is male dominated). They ranged in age from 23 to 62, and had careers in corrections as short as six months and as long as 32 years. Fewer than half had military backgrounds. Among the ranks of those who died by suicide were officers, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Several had served as a deputy superintendent or higher. Most of the 16 prisons across the state had experienced at least one officer suicide, with a handful experiencing multiple suicides. In several years, there had been four to five suicides. The only outwardly obvious traits these officers had in common was that they all were working at the time, or had worked, for the MADOC, and they had all died by suicide. In 2016, my colleague Carlos Monteiro and I were awarded a fed- eral grant from the National Institute of Justice to work with the MADOC in conducting an expansive mixed methods study of suicide in correc- tions. We articulated five primary goals for this work: 1. Develop a nuanced understand- ing of the context within which officer suicide has occurred;

We also recognized that, for those left behind, a suicide loss is differ- ent from any other type of death, and that it is exceedingly difficult to de- scribe the impacts to anyone who has not been through it. Nonetheless, we wanted to try to convey the stories of these officers with an authenticity that can be relayed only through the words of those who had known the deceased person most intimately. Given the stigma still associated with suicide, we felt it was particularly comprehensively as possible, so that we could describe the way that they had lived, rather than focus exclusively on the way that they had died. To give those who knew these officers best the opportunity to tell the story of their loved one, we set out to find and interview the family members and close friends of the 20 officers who had died by suicide important to describe the officers’ lives as

2. Comprehensively assess the many impacts of correctional officer suicide on families, friends, and colleagues; 3. Better understand the impact of officer suicides on the institu- tional environment; 4. Identify correlates of (and risk factors for) anxiety, depres- sion, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation; and 5. Understand how the structure, function, and composition of officers’ social networks might be related to suicide ideation, as well as to indicators of well-being. Stigma and impact As a person who lost an immedi- ate family member to suicide, and who understands that the loss of a loved one to suicide is impossible to ever fully recover from, it was extremely important to me person- ally that we represent the officers who had died by suicide as more than simply statistics in a federally funded research study. The officers who had died were individuals with families and friends who loved them and who would have done whatever necessary to prevent the suicide, could they have done so. Given the stigma still associated with suicide, we felt it was particularly important to describe the officers’ lives as com- prehensively as possible, so that we could describe the way that they had lived, rather than focus exclusively on the way that they had died.

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