Suicide Risk Among Federal Sex Crime Defendants Under Pretrial Supervision
Author: James Byrne.; April Pattavina.; Arthur Lurigio.
Source: Volume 16, Number 01, May/June 2012 , pp.1-6(6)
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Abstract:
The sex offender population is one of the fastest-growing criminal populations handled in the federal courts; increasing 172% since 2001. A number of recent reports have focused on the prevention of attempted and completed suicides in prison and jail settings, however, there is no empirical research on the nature and extent of the suicide problem among the pretrial release population; there is no literature to review on possible/actual programmatic strategies to prevent suicide during pretrial supervision; and evaluation research on the effectiveness of different approaches to the prevention of suicide during pretrial release has not been conducted. Byrne et al. argue that best practices in prison or jail-based sex offender treatment can be identified, but the focus of such reviews is typically on the reduction of reoffending among populations of known sex offenders. More attention should be focused on the reduction of self-harm (or suicide) among known sex offenders or sex crime defendants.Keywords: suicide; sex offenders
Affiliations:
1: University of Massachusetts at Lowell; 2: University of Massachusetts at Lowell; 3: University of Loyola.