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Self Harm In Prisons

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Hypothesis The researchers hypothesis was to better understand acts of self-harm among inmates in correctional institutions. They analyzed data from medical records on 244,699 incarcerations in the New York City jail system. The study took place from January 1, 2010 to January, 31, 2013. Most inmates often arrived to jail with significant pre-existing mental illness.These inmates may also be influenced by the environment stressors or punishments. About ⅓ of the inmates in the New York City jail system receive mental health services. This is increasing over time. Their objective was to better understand the factors associated with self-harm and whether inmates might be better served with an advanced approach to their behavioral issues.
Participants
The participants in the research are inmates from the New York City jail system. Inmates violate rules and do not listen to the security staff, often ended up in solitary confinement. …show more content…

One limitation is there were delays for inmates to be put in solitary confinement for rule violations. Since jail is a short-stay setting many of the inmates are sentenced to solitary but never make it to solitary. And the inmates who are waiting to be moved to solitary often self-harm themselves just anticipating going to solitary confinement. The second limitation they had was the lack of data regarding criminal charges or jail rule violations. And the third limitation is that they had no systematic data on the inmates who did self-harm before they were incarcerated, thus they couldn’t examine the extent of which previous acts were independent predictors of jail behavior or self-harm. The method I learned in class sounds like the researchers used longitudinal design and experimental research. I believe this because they studied medical records and if the inmates used self-harm acts done over a period of time and they manipulated the time they stayed in

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