Self Injuries In Prisons

This journal article explains self-injuries which occur in incarcerated prisons, to those which provide mental health services and accommodate for more than 100 inmates. Aiming to provide estimates of self-injurious behaviour (SIB) rates, centred on self-injurious behaviour, but not being suicide, from this data collection, it should allow those sufficient opportunity to report the different variations of SIB which is revealed in prison. Furthermore this study of SIB in state prisons allow for further analysis into the frequency of institutional responded and characteristics which relate to SIB in prisons. In gaining responses from the survey which was sent out, a blank category was left, where respondents were allowed to write any other additional

To reassure that there were a high completion rate, the responses for most of the questions were check boxes and some questions expected a short written answer. It was made sure that a note was taken to differentiate self-injury from suicide by providing a definition “Self-injury refers to inmates hurting themselves, but without the intention of committing suicide.” (Smith and Kaminski 2011:31). It was also made sure that the surveys were sent out to those who worked closely within the mental health profession and that they worked closely with this type of population – where they should be able to distinguish the difference between suicide and self-injury without the intent of killing

In addition to this, 78.3% reported that they dealt with and house one or more of those inmates who had seriously self-injured. The main occurrence of prisons inmates involved in self-injury was at 2.4% whilst serious self-injury sat at 0.7%. This implies the average number of inmates who partake in serious and non-serious self-injury are relatively low. Nevertheless some prison facilities, self-injury is seen as a major problem in some institutions as near to one third of the inmates self-injured (32.3%) and 10% self-injured