Corrections_Today_March_April_2020_Volume 82, Number 2

nEWS & vIEWS

with officers who volunteered to speak with us, some of whom had known at least one of the officers who had died. We had just a handful of interviews left to complete as of October 2019. As part of these interviews, we ask the officers questions about their own health and well-being. We also ask about their personal experiences with suicide including whether (and how well) they knew any of the officers who have died by suicide. We administer a series of validated instruments to assess their self-reported levels of anxiety, de- pression, post-traumatic stress and suicidal ideation. We ask questions about their sleep patterns and their alcohol use, about their stress levels, and about the amount of conflict in their work and family lives. We ask them what they think the department should be doing about suicide. Perhaps the most innovative part of our second-phase work is our egocentric social network analy- sis — a tool used to understand the structure and function of an indi- vidual’s network ties. We open the interview with a series of questions about the people that officer knows, trusts, or can rely on for different types of needs. Then we ask some questions about the people named, including how well each of those people knows each other. We hope this aspect of our study will help further our understanding of the size, structure, and density of of- ficers’ social networks, and of the protective (or isolating) functions that those social networks can serve. We worry that some officers’ social networks become more constrained,

and their social worlds more isolat- ed, as they become more embedded in the work of corrections. We are particularly concerned about the effects that shiftwork, and working certain shifts, can have on officers’ personal and professional lives. We anticipate that the social network analysis will only become more impactful as we begin to develop a longitudinal study following offi- cers’ well-being over time (from the academy onward). Perhaps the most innovative part of our second-phase work is our egocentric social network analysis — a tool used to understand the structure and function of an individual’s network ties. Promoting mental wellness As we have traveled around the country, describing our research and sharing what we are learn- ing, I am struck by just how often I am approached by an officer or

administrator from a department of corrections in another state who wants to share that they too have recently lost a disproportionate (and often shocking) number of col- leagues to suicide. We have learned over these past three years that what we thought might be an anomaly is probably not an anomaly at all. We are only now beginning the work of analyzing the extensive data we have collected over these past three years. In 2020, we look forward to sharing the results of this research with the families who have lost a loved one, and with the correc- tional and broader law enforcement communities. Although we believe that it is almost impossible to predict suicide, and therefore it has proven exceedingly difficult to prevent, we hope to use what we find to develop a better understanding of some of the risk factors for anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and suicidal ideation that can serve as precursors to suicide. Like the families who agreed to meet with us to share some memo- ries and to describe the devastating impact of the loss of their husband, wife, son, daughter, father, brother, sister, uncle or best friend, we hope that this work will eventually mean that the family of another officer might never have to know the endur- ing pain of suicide.

Natasha Frost is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, you can email her at

n.frost@northeastern.edu.

18 — March/April 2020 Corrections Today