Suicide in prisons in England and Wales from 1988 to 1995

This study is based on an examination of 377 official records (from the English Prison Service's Suicide Awareness Support Unit) of self‐inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales for the period from 5 February 1988 to 5 November 1995. The study builds on the work of earlier researchers in the area of suicides in prisons (Topp, 1979; Dooley, 1990) and provides a detailed analysis of all self‐inflicted deaths occurring in prisons in England and Wales, something never previously undertaken. In this paper we present some of the main results from our research.