ABSTRACT
Prison suicide research has remained isolated from advances made in other areas of prison research and from sociological critiques. The role of individual factors has been prominent: psychiatric explanations are assumed to play a major role in accounts of suicides both in and out of prison. Research in prison sociology has indicated the importance of environmental variables in understanding issues such as absconding, riots and disturbances. The role of environmental variables and of interactive explanations for prison suicide have been slow to appear, but may be of equal significance in this field. Prison suicide research needs to be brought into the broader world of prison sociology. This book represents an attempt to do this.
