Citation

Cooke DJ, Michie C. Leg. Crim. Psychol. 1996; 1(2): 287-293.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, British Psychological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.2044-8333.1996.tb00326.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Fifteen suicides occurred in Scottish prisons in 1994; this appeared to represent a dramatic increase over the rate in previous years. It is argued that rare random events tend to cluster and give the false impression of significant change. In order to determine whether the number of suicides in 1994 was unusually high the number of prison suicides between 1976 and 1994 were compared with a Poisson distributon. Corrections for variations in the size of the prison population and variations in the rate of suicide in the general population indicated that the rise in prison suicides was less dramatic than initial impressions had suggested. The implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Language: en