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Juvenile Suicides in Adult Jails - Findings From a National Survey of Juveniles in Secure Detention Facilities

NCJ Number
92639
Date Published
1983
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This document reports results of a study to test empirically the widespread suspicion that juveniles in adult jails have a suicide rate higher than that of juveniles in the general population.
Abstract
The study sample was drawn from all juvenile detention centers, all jails with an average daily population of 250 inmates, 20 percent of jails with an average daily population of less than 250 inmates, and 6.8 percent of lockups. The study documented 383,328 children in secure juvenile detention. The rate of suicide among juveniles in adult jails during 1978 was 12.3 per 100,000, which is 4.6 times larger than the suicide rate of 2.7 per 100,000 among youths in the general population during 1977. The rate of suicide among juveniles in adult lockups was 8.6 per 100,000 in 1978, which is more than three times larger than the rate of 2.7 among children in the general population in 1977. Unexpectedly, the suicide rate among children in juvenile detention facilities was only 1.6 per 100,000 in 1978, which is lower than that of the general population. The juvenile suicide rate in adult jails was almost 7.7 times larger than that of juvenile detention centers. Tabular data and eight refences are provided.