The overview is largely restricted to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Within numerous societies, there is an increased risk of suicide among incarcerated members when compared to the non-incarcerated in that same society. Throughout the development of research on institutional suicide, it is clear that situational factors are easier to identify than individual factors in the prediction of suicide in the prison. In the countries examined prison suicides occur at rates that are much higher than their corresponding outside populations; for example, in England and Wales the inmate suicide rate is seven times greater than that of demographically comparable individuals in the general citizenry. One common similarity among various national prison systems is the high risk for suicide among younger inmates. This may be associated with the higher rates of victimization of young offenders in prisons. Another common factor found in the various national prison systems is the connection between psychiatric illness and suicide. Those diagnosed with schizophrenia, in particular, have a high propensity for suicide. Further, prisoners with life sentences have an increased risk of suicide. These acts of self-destruction common to prisons in several industrialized nations must lead to a questioning of the utility of incarceration within these cultures. It is not the individual victim alone who pays for his/her suicide, but the society as a whole, in the form of further disintegration of the community bonds between a society and its members. 14 references