Durkheim's Suicide Case Study

Wrongful convictions are serious and have been happening more frequently as we have seen throughout the course. Many people believe that once a person has been cleared for a crime that nothing else matters or that there are no implications. Furthermore, many people seem to bypass or forget that being wrongfully convicted has immeasurable consequences on an individual: The most severe being suicide. This paper will focus on case studies from the perspective of Durkheim 's suicide theory. In Durkheim 's book, he highlights four different types of suicide; altruistic, fatalistic, egotistic and anomie suicide and the reasons behind each different suicide type. As a result, people who are wrongfully convicted commit egotistic or fatalistic suicide after being wrongfully convicted. The first individual this paper will investigate is Kalief Browner who was wrongfully convicted of theft, soon after being

The second case study, is that of Jay Cheshire, who was wrongfully accused of rape and once his name was cleared also committed suicide. People tend to think that once a person 's name is cleared that everything is 'fixed ' as one can see this is not the case. This paper will tie together Durkheim 's theory of suicide and the wrongful convictions of Browder and Cheshire.

To understand how Durkheim 's theory of suicide applies to prison and more specifically the Kalief Browder case and the Jay Cheshire case, one must understand Durkheim 's theory. To begin, Durkheim suggested that it is important to identify that suicide could be studied sociologically, and not only psychologically. Many things can contribute to one 's decision to commit suicide, but Durkheim highlighted how not only internal factors shape one 's decision to end their life, but external factors also have an impact. In the beginning of the book Durkheim spent a lot of time constructing his definition of