ArticlesSuicide in recently released prisoners: a population-based cohort study
Introduction
Several studies have examined the risk factors for suicide in custody,1, 2, 3, 4, 5 but little is known about the risk of suicide after release from prison.6, 7, 8 A study in Finland7 showed that the suicide rate in people within 1 year of release from prison was almost three times the rate in the general population. A study in England and Wales8 showed that male offenders under criminal justice community supervision were at least ten times more likely to die by suicide than men in the general population. This study was a national study, but included only prisoners released under the supervision of probation, thus excluding more than half of all released prisoners. Here, we report data for a comprehensive 3-year national sample of self-inflicted death within 12 months of release from prison in England and Wales.
Section snippets
Study cohort
This study was approved by the multicentre research ethics committee of the Thames Valley National Health Service (NHS), Reading, UK. Information on suicides was taken from the database of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness,9 which has records of individuals in England and Wales who receive a verdict of suicide or an open verdict at coroner's inquest. This information was obtained from the Office for National Statistics for England and
Results
In 244 988 released prisoners, we identified 382 suicides (34 women, 348 men) within 1 year of release. Suicides by recently released prisoners accounted for 3% of the 14 097 suicides occurring between 2000 and 2002, while released prisoners accounted for only 0·2% of the population (table). Figure 1 shows the distribution of these suicides, separated into 28-day periods over the year after release. 79 (21%) suicides took place in the first 28 days after release, and 195 (51%) within the first
Discussion
This study has shown that, during the first 12 months after release, prisoners in our analysis were at a much greater risk of suicide than the general population. Risk was particularly increased during the first 28 days, during which about a fifth of all suicides occurred. The risk was similar in men and women but, compared with the general population, the relative risk in women was substantially higher than in men. This result seems to support a previous finding that the rate of suicide for
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