The Interaction of Personal and Occupational Factors in The Suicide Deaths of Correction Officers

Justice Quarterly
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjqy20
The Interaction of Personal and Occupational

Factors in the Suicide Deaths of Correction
Officers
Natasha A. Frost & Carlos E. Monteiro
To cite this article: Natasha A. Frost & Carlos E. Monteiro (2020) The Interaction of Personal
and Occupational Factors in the Suicide Deaths of Correction Officers, Justice Quarterly, 37:7,
1277-1302, DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2020.1839538
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2020.1839538
Published online: 21 Dec 2020.
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JUSTICE QUARTERLY
2020, VOL. 37, NO. 7, 1277–1302
https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2020.1839538
The Interaction of Personal and Occupational Factors in

the Suicide Deaths of Correction Officers
Natasha A. Frosta and Carlos E. Monteirob
a
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA; bDepartment
of Sociology, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USA
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In the aftermath of a cluster of at least twenty suicides among Received 1 May 2020
correction officers working for a state department of correction, Accepted 13 October 2020
we conducted the first extensive mixed-methods study of correc-
tion officer suicide. Using a grounded theory approach, we KEYWORDS
sought to better understand the ways in which personal and Prisons; corrections; suicide;
suicide risk;
occupational factors may have contributed to the suicide deaths correction officers
of the officers. We conducted comprehensive case studies that
involved reviewing each officer’s personnel file in its entirety,
extracting administrative data to capture work experiences and
violence exposures, and conducting interviews with family mem-
bers and friends of the officers to better understand the personal
and professional lives of those officers who had died by suicide.
Through inductive analyses of the data collected, we found that
the interaction of personal and occupational risk factors with
aspects of the occupational work culture best explained suicide
among the observed cases.
In 2016, almost 43,000 Americans died by suicide (Peterson et al., 2018). Suicide,
which is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, claims more than
twice as many lives each year as homicide and causes immeasurable pain, suffering,
and loss to individuals, families, and communities (Office of the Surgeon General &
National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012). Suicide rates have been
increasing nationally for at least the past two decades with the age-adjusted suicide
rate in the United States increasing by 30 percent (from 10.4 to 13.5 per 100,000)
between 2000 and 2016 alone (Hedegaard, Curtin, & Warner, 2018). Rates of suicide
of males between age 25–44 and 45–64 were reported as among the highest at
26.2 and 29.1 per 100,000 respectively in 2016. Moreover, Center for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) research has demonstrated that suicide risk varies substantially
by occupation with the protective service occupations, which includes corrections,
consistently ranking among the ten occupations at highest risk for suicide (Peterson
et al., 2018).
CONTACT Natasha A. Frost n.frost@northeastern.edu

ß 2020 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences
1278 N. A. FROST AND C. E. MONTEIRO
Between 2010 and 2015, at least twenty current and former correction officers who
had worked for the state department of correction in Massachusetts died by suicide.1
With twenty confirmed suicides across an agency employing approximately 3,500
sworn officers, the average rate of suicide for correction officers over this period was
105 per 100,000.2 Even in the context of rising suicide rates across the country (Freyer,
2018), and recognizing the elevated risk for suicide among men and among those
working in the protective service occupations (McIntosh et al., 2016), the rate of sui-
cide among correction officers within this agency was as much as four times higher
than the rate in this high-risk age group nationally (Hedegaard et al., 2018).
Concern about the problem of correction officer suicide in the state led the
Massachusetts legislature to establish a “Special Commission to Study the Prevention
of Suicide Among Correction Officers” (2019) and pressure was mounting on the
department to do something to address the problem. It was within this context that
our pre-existing collaborative relationship with the Massachusetts Department of
Correction, developed through research projects extending back more than a decade,
afforded us the opportunity to conduct research on the vastly under-studied issue of
suicide among officers within corrections.
Literature review
Suicide among correction officers
Despite the expansive body of work on correction officer wellbeing and the oft-cited
(but quite dated) average life expectancy of correction officers of 59 years (Cheek,
1984), researchers have only just begun to study suicide and suicidality among correc-
tion officers. We know, for example, of only one published study and three publicly
available reports that have reported specifically on the prevalence of correction officer
suicide (or suicide ideation) and associated risk factors. Each of these publications sug-
gests the rate of suicide and suicidaility are elevated for correction officers. In a study
published more than two decades ago, Stack and Tsoudis (1997) reported that the
rate of suicide among correction officers was 39% higher than the rate in the general
population. Although brief, Stack and Tsoudis’ study provided the first estimate of sui-
cide risk among correction officers, with a logistic regression indicating that age, edu-
cation, gender, marital status and race were all significantly related to suicide risk
among officers.
The second study was a report published by a taskforce launched in response to
the suicide deaths of 55 law enforcement officers in New Jersey between 2003 and
2007 (New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force, 2009). In its report, the task force estab-
lished that the rate of suicide among correction officers there had been double that
of police officers in the state. Although the number of police officers in the state was
far greater than the number of correction officers, 16 of the 55 suicides – or almost
30% of those who died – were current or former correction officers. The report
1
There were additional officer suicides across county correction agencies over the same period.
2
Calculated by the authors as a three-year moving average for the period between 2010 and 2015. Note that the
calculated rate at the department includes officers who had retired prior to their death (all but one had died just
one to two years after retiring).
JUSTICE QUARTERLY 1279
identified easy access to firearms, occupational stress stemming from critical incident
exposures, and the strain of shift work on family relationships as among the most
prominent risk factors for suicide (New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force, 2009, p. 7).
More recently, 10% of officers surveyed in California reported having considered sui-
cide (Lerman, 2017) and, in a study conducted for the Michigan Department of
Correction, Spinaris and Brocato (2019) reported that 1% of those surveyed self-
reported that they were “currently and actively planning to complete suicide” (p.5).
Research on correction officer suicide is sparse and there are many more published
studies related to suicidal ideation and suicide among police officers (Bishopp &
Paquette Boots, 2014; Chae & Boyle, 2013; Chopko, Palmieri, & Facemire, 2014; Hem,
Berg, & Ekeberg, 2001; Pienaar, Rothmann, & van de Vijver, 2007; Violanti, 2004;
Violanti, Owens, McCanlies, Fekedulegn, & Andrew, 2019). In a systematic review of
the police suicide research, Chae and Boyle (2013) reported that across the studies
that they had reviewed “five prominent aspects of policing were associated with risk
for suicidal ideation: organizational stress; critical incident trauma; shift work; relation-
ship problems; and alcohol use and abuse” (p. 91). A second meta-analytic review
identified more than ten risk factors for suicide among first responders that included
factors such as access to firearms, occupational hazards and exposures, erratic shift
schedules and a capability for suicide (e.g. elevated physical pain tolerance) (Stanley,
Hom, & Joiner, 2016).
The correctional work environment

Although research on correction officer suicide specifically is extremely limited, deca-
des of empirical research on correctional work has established that occupational stress
is particularly acute in the correctional setting (Brower, 2013) and there are good rea-
sons to believe that the occupational environment could impact suicidality and suicide
risk among correction officers. The correctional work environment has been described
as one that carries inherent dangers and risks to personal safety that threaten the
physical and mental health and wellbeing of officers (Ferdik & Smith, 2016). Although
the risk of threats to personal safety and increased exposures to violence, injury and
death are among the most obvious stressors within the work environment, adverse
outcomes among officers have been attributed to a multitude of aspects of correc-
tional work including: understaffing, extended hours, and the militaristic structure of
correctional facilities (Cullen, Link, Cullen, & Wolfe, 1990; Gilbert, 1997), negative public
perceptions of corrections and correction officers (Griffin, 2006), perceived job danger-
ousness and risk of victimization (Garcia, 2008; Lambert, Minor, Gordon, Wells, &
Hogan, 2018), the lack of career advancement options and opportunities (Johnson
et al., 2005; Lambert, Hogan, & Altheimer, 2010) and demanding shift schedules
(Swenson, Waseleski, & Hartl, 2008).
The contemporary body of research on correction officer wellbeing, spanning more
than 30-years, has linked correctional work to compromised physical and emotional
health outcomes (Buden et al., 2016; 2017; Ferdik & Smith, 2016; Harvey, 2014), includ-
ing cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and digestive disease, diabetes, high cholesterol
and hypertension problems (Cheek & Miller, 1983; Dowden & Tellier, 2004; Warren,
Dussetschleger, Punnett, & Cherniack, 2015), alcoholism and drug dependency (Morse,
Dussetschleger, Warren, & Cherniack, 2011; Weir, Stewart, & Morris, 2012), and a high
incidence of post-traumatic stress symptomatology (James & Todak, 2018; Spinaris,
Denhof, & Kelleway, 2012).
Although a host of outcomes have been identified across the literature, the most
recent systematic and meta-analytic review (Butler, Tasca, Zhang, & Carpenter, 2019)
noted that the vast majority of the published empirical research studies on correction
officers focused on one of three outcomes: job satisfaction, job stress, and organiza-
tional commitment. Crucially, although health and wellbeing are a focus of many stud-
ies in corrections, mental health outcomes were measured in only 9 of the 203
empirical studies identified and none of the studies examined suicidal ideation or sui-
cide as an outcome (Butler et al., 2019, p. 87).
Post-traumatic stress in correction officers

While there have been few studies of officer suicide in corrections, there have been
studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which has been identified as a prom-
inent risk factor for suicide among police officers and veterans (Bullman & Kang, 1994;
Chae & Boyle, 2013; Jakupcak et al., 2009; LeardMann et al., 2013). In a statewide well-
being survey of officers in California, researchers reported that correction officers in
that state had violence exposures that approached those of military veterans (Lerman,
2017). And in Michigan, Spinaris and Brocato (2019), reported that more than 30% of
correction officers reported symptoms consistent with a PTSD diagnosis. Similarly,
through a nationwide survey of correctional staff, Spinaris and colleagues (Spinaris
et al., 2012) assessed the extent to which correctional employees experienced or wit-
nessed incidents of violence, injury and death and reported that 100% of the sample
had these experiences, with the security staff participants (e.g. non-managerial correc-
tion officers) reporting an average of 38 traumatic exposures across their careers.
Moreover, 34% of the security staff had experienced symptoms of PTSD in the previ-
ous 30 days and those exhibiting PTSD symptomology reported significantly higher
exposures to incidents of violence, injury and death (Spinaris et al., 2012)
As in studies of policing (Violanti et al., 2018), prevalence estimates for PTSD among
correction officers vary widely. Across two recent studies, for example, estimates of
PTSD in correction officers ranged from 19% to 54% (Jaegers et al., 2019; James &
Todak, 2018). Nonetheless, a recent systematic review on the impacts of correctional
work on mental health concluded that based on the available studies, prevalence rates
of PTSD among correction officers are indeed elevated when compared to both other
occupational groups and to the general public (Regehr et al., 2019). Regehr and col-
leagues begin their meta-analysis by lamenting that “correctional officers are exposed
to violence, direct threat to themselves, and ultimately workplace injury at levels con-
siderably higher than that of other workers. Yet … the mental health consequences in
terms of post-traumatic stress (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and anxiety
disorder (AD) are relatively unknown in COs” (2019, p. 8). Based on the seven studies
they were able to identify that measure one or more of those mental health out-
comes, Regehr et al. report that elevated levels of PTSD among correction officers are
most strongly associated with traumatic or life-threatening injuries or with violence

witnessed or experienced on the job.
We know that correction officers experience elevated levels of distress symptomol-
ogy that has been consistently linked to suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior in
other populations, but we know very little about the specific risk factors for suicide
among correction officers and nobody to our knowledge has tried to explain suicide
among this population. Although there is a paucity of research on suicide in correc-
tions, we are certainly not the first to study suicide or to try to explain a cluster of sui-
cides in a specific population. As suicide is not commonly studied in criminology, we
briefly describe some of the leading theories of suicide across related disciplines.
Theories of suicide
For at least the past several decades, there has been a chasm between sociological
and psychological theories of suicide. Although the most prominent theories across
the literature are psychological theories, one of the most enduring theories of suicide
remains Durkheim’s sociological theory first published in 1897. Durkheim posited that
suicide can best be explained sociologically by attention to structural conditions at
the macro-level and depends fundamentally upon levels of social integration and
regulation within societies (Durkheim, 1979). At risk of oversimplification, in that sem-
inal work, Durkheim describes four ‘types’ of suicide based on variation in levels of
social integration and societal regulation across places over time: the egoistic (not
enough social integration), the altruistic (too much social integration), the anomic (not
enough regulation), and the fatalistic (too much regulation).
Psychologists and psychiatrists, on the other hand, have developed theories of sui-
cide that attempt to identify preconditions for suicide at the individual level and have
tended toward micro-level explanations of what Durkheim considered egoistic suicide
(not enough social integration). Psychologists have posited a combination of individ-
ual-level interpersonal factors, including an intense psychological pain or ‘psychache,’
(Shneidman, 1996), the despair of hopelessness (Beck, Kovacs, & Weissman, 1996),
overwhelming feelings of burdensomeness, and an acquired tolerance for physical
pain (sometimes described as a ‘capability for suicide’) (Joiner, 2005) as among the
conditions under which suicide occurs.
Thomas Joiner’s Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (ITS) (Joiner, 2005; Van Orden et al.,
2010), which builds upon Shneidman’s seminal theory of ‘psychache,’ is one of the
most frequently tested, and contested, contemporary psychological theory of suicide
(Chu et al., 2017; Hjelmeland & Knizek, 2020; Klonsky, 2020; Smith, Schuler, Fadoir,
Marie, & Basu, 2020). Joiner argued that “people desire death when two fundamental
needs are frustrated to the point of extinction; namely, the need to belong with or
connect to others, and the need to feel effective with or to influence others” (Joiner,
2005, p. 45). Joiner described these frustrated needs as thwarted belongingness and
perceived burdensomeness and argued that together these explain suicidal desire (or
ideation); however, only those who have acquired a capability for suicide can actually
follow through with that desire for death. In Joiner’s words, “those who have gotten
used to the negative aspects of suicide, and additionally, who have acquired
competence and even courage specifically regarding suicide, are the only ones cap-
able of the act – anyone else is unable to complete suicide, even if they want to”
(2005, p. 47). The acquired capability, in other words, is a necessary condition for sui-
cide to occur. According to Joiner, often those who die by suicide have typically
acquired this capability through repeated self-injurious behavior or previous suicide
attempts but, crucially, he argues that this capacity can be acquired through direct or
indirect exposure to violence, injury, and trauma.
Some of the most interdisciplinary work to emerge in recent years has been the
theoretical (and empirical) advances offered by collaborators Mueller and Abrutyn,
who in a series of publications have worked to develop a social-psychological theory
of suicide that incorporates insights from both the psychological and sociological per-
spectives (Abrutyn & Mueller, 2018, 2019; Mueller & Abrutyn, 2016). Mueller and
Abrutyn have focused their efforts on bringing the sociological back to the forefront
offering a contemporary revision of Durkheim’s concepts of social integration and
moral regulation that focuses on meso-level group dynamics (Abrutyn & Mueller,
2019). At the heart of their social-psychological theory is the recognition that “the
interaction between group dynamics and individuals produces—or prevents—the sui-
cidal impulse” (Mueller & Abrutyn, 2016, p. 881).
Mueller and Abrutyn applied their social-psychological framework through a quali-
tative study of a cluster of suicides in Poplar Grove, a pseudonym they used for a rela-
tively small, extremely tight-knit, affluent suburb in the United States (Mueller &
Abrutyn, 2016). In that study, Mueller and Abrutyn sought to “leverage social-psycho-
logical research on how groups shape individuals’ well-being to link meso-level forces,
including integration and regulation, and individuals’ risk of suicide” (2016, p. 878).
Through this qualitative study, which involved interviews with members of the adoles-
cents’ families and focus groups with members of the Poplar Grove community,
Mueller and Abrutyn (2016) demonstrate that while the mental health of individuals
certainly played some role in the suicides, the ‘structural-cultural conditions’ specific to
this community were equally important. They use evidence from their qualitative case
studies to demonstrate that the structural-cultural conditions of the highly integrated
and regulated community exerted significant influence “both by increasing adoles-
cents’ emotional distress and by decreasing both youths’ and parents’ willingness to
seek help” (p. 893). Although we did not set out to directly test any of these theories,
we approached this work with knowledge of theories developed to explain both sui-
cide and clusters of suicide in particular places.
The current study

This research is part of an expansive mixed-methods study of suicide among correc-
tions officers funded by the National Institute of Justice (Frost & Monteiro, 2016). We
articulated five primary goals for the larger study: (1) to develop a nuanced under-
standing of the full situational circumstances (e.g. context) within which officer sui-
cides had occurred; (2) to comprehensively assess the impacts of correction officer
suicide on families, friends, and colleagues; (3) to understand the impact of officer sui-
cides on the institutional environment; (4) to identify correlates of (and risk factors for)
anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation among cur-
rently employed officers; and (5) to understand how the structure, function, and com-
position of officers’ social networks might be related to suicide ideation, as well as to
indicators of wellbeing.
In this article, we focus on findings related to the first objective of the larger
research project: developing a nuanced understanding of the full situational context
within which correction officer suicide has occurred. Through a comprehensive case
study approach, we sought to better understand the ways in which personal and
occupational factors may have contributed to the suicide deaths of the officers work-
ing for a single department of correction. Because there has never been a study of
correction officer suicide, we adopted a grounded theory approach. While we were
cognizant of some of the leading theories of (and risk factors for) suicide, we did not
seek to test any particular theory, but instead used the qualitative data collected
through the case studies to develop an understanding of officer suicide “‘grounded’ in
the data themselves” (Charmaz, 2014, p.2).
Methods
The case studies that form the basis of this article were conducted between May 2017
and August 2019.3 To include a case in our sample, we relied on external validation of
suicide as the cause of death of the officer. Although that validation typically came via
a medical examiner’s determination on a death certificate in the officer’s personnel
file, we also requested police reports for each of the cases and some of those reports
indicated that the death was clearly a suicide. Our case study methodology involved
conducting comprehensive reviews of officer personnel files and coding administrative
data on violence exposures to better understand the occupational lives of the officers
and conducting interviews with family members and friends, including fellow officers
to better understand the personal lives of the officers. We use the data triangulated
across methods to develop an understanding of suicide among correction officers.
Administrative file reviews

As we launched the case studies, we were interested in whether these officers had
been experiencing problems at work that might help explain their suicide. We relied
on data provided by the department of correction to develop an understanding of the
occupational lives of the officers and to potentially identify any common factors across
the careers of the officers. For each case, we began the case study by thoroughly
reviewing the entire personnel file of each of the 20 officers who had died by suicide
between 2010 and 2015. In some cases, these personnel files spanned decades – in
others, mere months. Within the personnel files, we reviewed all the pre-employment
background investigation documents, each of the annual performance reviews, all
commendations and reprimands, and any disciplinary actions taken. We had access to
formal correspondence between the department and the officer. We noted any leaves
3
The research protocols for this study were approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (IRB
#17-02-02).
of absence, including for family medical (FMLA) and industrial accident (IA) leaves, and
the reasons for those leaves. Where they existed, we reviewed inmate grievances filed
against the officers.
We also requested incident and disciplinary reports for all of the officers who died
by suicide between 2010 and 2015 and coded them for direct and vicarious exposure
to violence.4 The disciplinary and incident reports are narrative reports filed by
responding and/or witnessing officers. In total, we received 2,549 incident reports and
640 disciplinary reports across the 20 officers. We read the narrative of each incident
and coded it for the following exposures to violence: (1) inmate on inmate fights, (2)
verbal assaults/threats on staff, (3) physical assaults on staff, (4) physical assaults on
staff with injury, (5) cell extractions and/or inmate restraints, (6) biohazard incidents
(throwing substances), (7) inmate self-harm, and (8) suicide attempts or completions.
We then coded for whether the officer was involved in the incident as a responding
officer or whether they witnessed the incident.
To our knowledge, the only files that we were not given access to were those
related to departmental internal affairs investigations. The department did, however,
provide information regarding the internal investigation status of each of the officers
indicating whether each of the officers had (1) ever been investigated by internal
affairs and (2) whether they had been under active investigation in the year immedi-
ately preceding their death. We also learned about some of these investigations from
our family and friend interviews. Beyond the department, we requested police reports
from the jurisdictions that responded to the initial call for service at the time of each
of the suicides and retrieved each officer’s criminal history from the state’s Division of
Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS).
We meticulously reviewed the materials gathered through the administrative files
and used them to develop a narrative summary describing each officer’s career.
Although the administrative file reviews allowed us to understand the officers as
employees, they told us little about the officers as people. As we began the case stud-
ies, we were particularly concerned that we represent the correction officers who had
died by suicide as more than just statistics. Given the stigma unfortunately still associ-
ated with suicide, we wanted to capture the officers’ lives as comprehensively as pos-
sible. To convey the stories of these officers and to better understand the personal
and professional circumstances surrounding their suicides, we sought to find and
interview the family members and close friends of each of the officers who had died
by suicide.
Interviews with family members and close friends, including other officers
To conduct the family and friend interviews, we used information found in the person-
nel files and in the publicly available obituaries of the officers and tried to contact
each of the people named therein. We contacted parents, siblings, spouses, adult chil-
dren, and extended family. Out of an abundance of concern for protecting privacy
4
These reports only go back to 2002 when the department’s inmate management system (IMS) was established.
Some of the officers had careers that extended back many years before 2002, but only incidents since 2002 can be
retrieved. For most officers, this analysis includes all incidents that occurred for at least 8 years prior to the suicide.
given the sensitive nature of our interviews, the university’s institutional review board
(IRB) required that we attempt to contact each individual at most twice via a letter
mailed to the last known address explaining the purpose of our research and request-
ing participation. In order to follow up with a potential participant, we had to have
received a return communication, expressing affirmative interest in interviewing with
the research team and providing an email or phone number. We heard from the fami-
lies and friends of 17 of the 20 officers (85%). A few families wrote to let us know that
participation would be too difficult as the experience was still too painful to recount,
but we ultimately interviewed a total of 42 family members and friends of twelve of
the officers.5 Just over a third of the family members and close friends we interviewed
were also current or former officers with the department of correction (15 of 42,
or 36%).
The interviews with family members and close friends were semi-structured and
guided by a series of questions that had been developed in advance to progressively
follow the officer’s life and career in more or less sequential order. With the permis-
sion of the participants we recorded the interviews and transcribed the conversations.
28 of the 42 interviews (67%) were audio-recorded. For the 14 interviews that were
not audio recorded, one or more research assistants took comprehensive notes as the
conversation proceeded. Most of our interviews, which ran from just over an hour to
just under three hours, were conducted in person by the lead researchers, usually in
the homes of the participants. The family members, close friends, and colleagues pro-
vided rich descriptions of the officers’ lives.6 For the nine cases where we conducted
interviews with multiple friends and family members of a single officer, there was a
high level of agreement across participants around the personal and professional cir-
cumstances leading up to the officer’s suicide.
After transcribing the interviews, we used NVivo 12 (a qualitative data analysis soft-
ware package) and a two-step coding method to develop the themes that emerged
across the cases from those many conversations (Hsiu-Fang & Shannon, 2005; Saldana,
2016). In the first step, at least two research assistants independently open-coded
each of the interviews adding emergent codes to a set of preliminary codes that we
had developed based on the existing literature on officer psychosocial wellbeing. In
the second step, we reviewed initial codes and memos developed during the open
coding process to refine the coding in an iterative process to identify patterns across
the cases and to discern salient themes.
Results
We present our results by first offering an overview of officers’ demographic and occu-
pational profiles before turning to emergent themes and subthemes that we discov-
ered through our iterative qualitative analysis process. Using pseudonyms to ensure
5
Two additional families corresponded with us in writing about the suicide death of their loved one but did not
participate in a formal in-person interview. These family members are not included among the 42 interview
participants.
6
All names used in this manuscript, including those of officers, family members, friends, and facilities are
pseudonyms created by the research team to protect confidentiality.
participant privacy, we use particularly salient quotes to highlight each of the themes
we identified. Finally, we provide an inductive analysis of the data collected across the
different methods.
Demographic and officer characteristics

The administrative and personnel files were the source for most of the demographic
and occupational data (see Table 1). Based on our review of the personnel records,
we determined that most of the officers who died had careers that were not excep-
tionally different from those of other officers we have studied across previous
research studies with the department (Frost, Monteiro, St. Louis, & Luckett, 2019;
Griffin et al., 2014). The officers who had died by suicide were mostly white (85%)
and mostly men (90%), and these percentages were roughly proportional to race
and gender representation among sworn officers in the department (which is major-
ity white 85% and male dominated 88%). Slightly fewer than half (45%) had military
backgrounds. At the time of their death, the officers ranged in age from 23 to 61
and they had worked for the department for as few six months to as long as
32 years. The majority (75%) were currently employed by the department at the time
of their death, but two of those currently employed officers had been detached
with pay (10%). The remaining five officers (25%) had retired, in all but one case
quite recently. While there was marked absenteeism in some of the cases, and evi-
dence of a significant increase in absenteeism in the year prior to their deaths for a
few of the officers, there were just as many for whom absenteeism had never been
a problem.
Among the ranks of those who died by suicide were fourteen officers, three ser-
geants, a lieutenant, and two captains. One of the officers died a lieutenant, following
a demotion that likely served as a triggering event for his suicide, but his captaincy
was restored posthumously. Two of the officers had served as a deputy superintend-
ent or higher in the administration. Fully half (50%) of the officers had been subject to
an internal affairs investigation and 35% were under investigation in the year preced-
ing their death. The department did not release any details of the internal affairs
investigations, but in a handful of those cases, we learned more about those investiga-
tions from the interviews. Four of the officers had been evaluated for fitness for duty,
which indicates that the department had been concerned about their ability to per-
form their occupational functions. 70% of the officers had criminal history records,
though the criminal record generally pre-dated their employment at the department
and had been noted in the background investigation in the personnel file. While the
criminal records included primarily dismissed arraignments for misdemeanor offenses,
there were a handful of more serious charges, including arraignments for assaults,
DUIs, and solicitation.
Although the department of correction runs sixteen correctional facilities, more
than two-thirds (14 of the 20, or 70%) of the officers who died by suicide had spent
some portion of their career with the department in one of the state’s two maximum
security prisons or at its forensic hospital. For 12 of those 14 officers, these were the
Table 1. Demographic and occupational profiles of MADOC correction officers who died by sui-
cide, 2010–2015.
f
(n ¼ 20) %
Gender
Male 18 (90%)
Female 2 (10%)
Race/Ethnicity
White 17 (85%)
Black 1 (5%)
Hispanic 1 (5%)
Mixed Race 1 (5%)
Age at Hire
20 24 9 (45%)
25 29 9 (45%)
30 or above 2 (10%)
Military Veteran
Yes 9 (45%)
Criminal History Record
Yes 14 (70%)
Highest Rank Achieved
Officer 14 (70%)
Sergeant 3 (15%)
Lieutenant 1 (5%)
Captain 2 (10%)
Evaluated for Fitness for Duty
Yes 4 (20%)
Subject of Internal Affairs Investigation
Ever 10 (50%)
Within a year of suicide 7 (35%)
Age at Death
20 29 3 (15%)
30 39 4 (20%)
40 49 10 (50%)
50 or above 3 (15%)
Employment Status at Death
Current Employee 13 (65%)
Retired 5 (25%)
Detached with Pay 2 (10%)
Cause of Death
Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound 14 (70%)
Intentional Overdose 4 (20%)
Asphyxiation by Hanging 2 (10%)
facilities where they had worked when they died (or at the time they retired). This is
particularly relevant because these are the institutions where department reports
show that officers are most likely to be exposed to violence.7
7
Liebling (2005) has argued that “ … there is a collective working personality or officer culture detectable among
prison officers in general. This ‘working personality’ is related to the nature of the occupation and is composed of
both positive and negative characteristics” (p.107). She adds that, although there is a collective working personality,
the officer culture can vary significantly across institutions and is “linked to indirectly expressed organizational goals”
(Liebling, 2005, p. 110). While there are certainly substantial variations in the working cultures of each of the prisons
across the state, two-thirds of those we interviewed for these case studies were friends and relatives with little
direct knowledge of the working cultures within the individual institutions. Other parts of our ongoing study of
officer suicide involve interviews and focus groups with administrators and separately with officers at all ranks and
across all of the facilities across the department. We anticipate we will be able to use these data to understand
some of the institution specific effects of what Liebling (2005) has described as the “complex and variegated”
working cultures across facilities (p. 120).
Direct and vicarious exposures to violence

The three correctional facilities where a majority of the officers had worked collectively
were associated with more than two-thirds of the officer suicides and are by far the
facilities with the highest levels of violence (accounting for at least half of all of the
department’s assaults with injury to either inmates or staff according to internal
reports shared with the research team). These three facilities were collectively the site
of 87% of the violence, injury, or death related incidents that the officers who died by
suicide were involved in. Together these three sites accounted for 90% of the inmate-
on-inmate fights, 90% of the threats on staff, 91% of the physical assaults on staff,
82% of the assaults on staff with injury, 87% of the cell extractions and inmate
restraints, 91% of the bio-hazard incidents, 70% of the incidents of inmate self-harm,
63% of the suicide attempts or completions, and 83% of the uses of chemical agents
identified across the incident reports.
Across the officers, cumulative exposures to violence varied quite widely ranging
from 0 to 340 (median of 11) incidents in which the officer either experienced or wit-
nessed violence, injury, or death. At the high end of the spectrum were the three offi-
cers who had spent part of their careers as sergeants or as members of the team
responsible for cell extractions and inmate restraints. At the low end were officers
who had spent large parts of their career assigned to a post with significantly less
inmate contact (e.g. a transportation or perimeter security). In terms of witnessing self-
harm and suicide, there were incident reports documenting exposures for 11 of the 20
officers. Across those 11 officers, most had experienced or witnessed fewer than five
incidents of inmate self-harm or suicide, but the three officers who had been ser-
geants at the time of their death had each been involved in responding to at least 15
such incidents. Incident reports can only capture exposures to suicide within the
prison walls. Beyond the incident reports, we also learned of exposures to suicide out-
side of the prisons through the interviews. Members of one officer’s family, for
example, explained that Andrew had lost his closest colleague (another correction offi-
cer) and a godson to suicide in the years leading up to his own suicide.
When asked about exposure to violence specifically, a number of the family mem-
bers and friends, particularly those who were also officers themselves, directly refer-
enced the role of vicarious trauma through exposure to suicide. Kevin, an officer who
admitted to having had suicidal thoughts himself, repeatedly talked about the central
role of exposure to direct and vicarious trauma within the prisons. He was particularly
cognizant of, and forthcoming about, the cumulative nature of the impacts of
these exposures:
We deal with cutups all the time. We deal with suicides, hangings and stuff. It becomes
kind of normal … But he could [pointing to an interviewer], he could deal with a
thousand of them and it not bother him one bit. You [pointing to the other interviewer]
could deal with 50 and it not bother you. And her [pointing to a research assistant] and I
could – our first one and, and it bothers us. And then your 51st one – and his 1,001st –
and it bothers you. And the stuff that I’ve seen people do to themselves is just – it’s
mind boggling. Inserting stuff into their bodies. Places that [phew], I just – it’s just not
normal. And I can recall, I can recall two incidents in my head with inmates where I still
see that body like it was yesterday. And then doing CPR. They had died. Cau— they k—
they killed themselves and harmed themselves. I remember seeing them, doing CPR on
them, and its still … in my head I guess.
Kevin, correction officer and close friend of Josh
When asked whether Josh had also experienced these exposures, Kevin responded
“Oh, God yeah. He did … he was in the can a lot, so he did a lot of that. He was
involved in a lot of uses of force, a lot of staff assaults.” Similarly in another case,
when asked whether Tyler had been physically assaulted, Ron said: “Yeah, most of us,
yeah most of us have all been … it’s [facility name] … nobody escapes that place
without getting assaulted.” (Ron, correction officer and relative of Tyler).
As Spinaris and colleagues have previously argued, cumulative exposures to inci-
dents involving violence, injury and death (e.g. trauma) result in elevated risk for anx-
iety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptomology (Spinaris et al., 2012), each
of which have been associated with elevated risk for suicidal ideation and suicidal
behavior (Bullman & Kang, 1994; Franklin et al., 2017). Joiner (2005) would emphasize
that these occupational exposures to violence also contribute to the development of
an acquired capability for suicide in these (and presumably other) officers.
These are also the three facilities where family members and friends of the officers
were most likely to talk about the ways in which the institution changes the individ-
ual.8 As one family member, who himself has over 20 years in the department at one
of the three facilities, explained “It changes you as a person, you know, through time
it changes you as a person. You’re not the same person, you know, going in as you
are coming out of that. Its … it definitely does some damage inside.” (Ron, correction
officer and family member of Tyler). In a study of the personal and professional lives
of British prison officers, Crawley (2004) similarly reported that having “been ‘changed’
by prison work was a common perception amongst officers in every prison” that she
had studied (p.184).
The prevalence of known risk factors for suicide

The administrative files told us about the careers of the officers who had died by sui-
cide, but revealed little about their personal lives or the circumstances surrounding
their suicide deaths. Only two of the officer’s personnel files, for example, contained
clear evidence of deteriorating mental health even though, through the interviews, we
learned that many of the officers had struggled with mental illness in the months
(and sometimes years) leading up to their deaths. Risk factors for suicide (e.g. factors
which make it more likely that individuals will consider, attempt or die by suicide)
play a key role in identifying who is at risk and include: prior suicide attempts, sub-
stance abuse, mood disorders, access to lethal means, cultures that discourage talking
about or seeking help for problems, and exposure to suicide and trauma (Centers for
Disease Control & Prevention, 2020).
As demonstrated in Table 2, most of the officers who died had been struggling in
the days and months leading up to their deaths and a number of the prominent risk
8
Given the small number of officers who died at higher ranks, to preserve confidentiality when we discuss our
findings, we refer to all of the officers as ‘officers’ without reference to rank.
factors for suicide were identified across our case studies of the suicide deaths of cor-
rection officers.9
Table 2. Risk factors for suicide among MADOC officers who died by suicide.
f
(n 5 14) %
Mental Health Concerns 12 86%
Anger 1 7%
Anxiety 1 7%
Anxiety & Depression 2 14%
Depression 8 57%
None Reported 2 14%
Relationship Issues (Separations/Divorces/Child Custody Issues) 11 79%
Substance Abuse Issues (Alcohol and/or Drugs) 11 79%
Serious Injuries / Chronic Pain 8 57%
Known Previous Suicide Attempts 5 36%
In addition to the exposures to violence discussed previously, access to firearms

(90%), relationship problems (79%), deteriorating mental health (86%), excessive alco-
hol use (79%), and chronic pain (57%) emerged as prevalent across the case studies.10
Each of the families and friends of the officers who had died described what they
perceived to be the circumstances surrounding the officers’ deaths. For some of the
officers who died by suicide, the family explained that there had been a relatively
lengthy prior history of anxiety, depression, or both. In five of the cases, there had
been known previous suicide attempts and in at least two of the cases, those suicide
attempts dated back to adolescence. In a related set of cases, there was not a long
history of mental health struggles, but the officers were known to be experiencing
particularly acute personal or professional crises at the time that they died by suicide.
Family members described these officers as emotionally and behaviorally stable until
they had confronted a particularly significant, recent life challenge. Although these
challenges were in some instances very clearly work-related (e.g. a demotion, an
ongoing internal affairs investigation), more often they were personal.
A number of the officers were in the midst of difficult divorces and child custody
disputes, or a relationship that was important to them had very recently ended.
Alcohol and prescription drug use were prevalent as well, with most of the officers
described by family and friends as battling growing problems with substance use and
abuse in the months leading up to their deaths. Some were abusing prescription med-
ications to fight chronic pain from injuries, often sustained at work. In these cases,
which were about equal to the number with known lengthy mental health histories,
there were clear precipitating events. These officers were facing an ongoing existential
crisis, their wellbeing was deteriorating, and their families were concerned, but typic-
ally not about the potential for suicide. Frequently, these were officers who had
recently retired or who were hoping to retire soon.
9
Because most of what we learned about the suicide deaths of these officers was learned from the interviews, we
know far less about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the officers for whom we had little to no contact
from family or friends.
10
Across most of the cases, only limited evidence of chronic pain and violence exposure can be deduced from the
official administrative and personnel records.
Then there were the handful of cases that lacked most of the thematic elements
we identified across other cases. These cases seemed to be more impulsive and may
have been triggered by a single event. In one of the cases, Adrian, a young officer
with a promising future got in a single vehicle accident following a night of drinking
with friends, had a blood-alcohol level that far exceeded the legal limit, and took his
own life with a gun he had in the trunk of the car. Another young officer, Conor, died
by suicide after learning that his girlfriend was cheating on him with a close friend.
Although there were only a few of these cases, these officers, who tended to be
among the youngest, seem to have simply lost perspective in a moment, making a
spontaneous decision with lasting consequences.
The occupational context

Although very few of the families and friends interviewed directly implicated the depart-
ment in the suicide of their loved one, across virtually every interview we conducted, the
occupational context of corrections, which Crawley (2004) has described as the ‘working
culture,’ was identified as problematic and it was identified as problematic in three very
specific ways. First, there was the fear among the officers that if their problems were
exposed, they would be perceived as weak by their colleagues and supervisors (and, if
their personal problems got out more broadly, by the inmates as well). Then there was
the related fear that any attempt to seek help might be revealed and help-seeking itself
was additional evidence of weakness. Finally, there was the desire to hang on to the job
no matter what the consequences might be for the officer’s own wellbeing.
Sucking it up and dealing with it

Although expressed in a multitude of ways, across almost all of the cases, we found
examples of the fear of being perceived as weak. The most detailed story, told to us
by the wife of one of the officers who had a very long career in corrections, is particu-
larly demonstrative. She was relaying the story of an accidental death of an officer in
a county correctional facility many years prior:
One of the officers came in, had a gun, and for some reason decided to joke around with
the gun. He thought it was unloaded … put the gun in his mouth and killed himself in
front of the other officers … one of the officers [who witnessed the death] was one of
my husband’s very good friends. [My husband] reacted very strangely I thought. His very
good friend witnessed this … and the guy didn’t mean to kill himself, he was joking. So
his friend couldn’t go back to work for weeks, he was traumatized by it, and I remember
my husband saying ‘He’s got to suck it up, he’s got to get back to work, he’s got to stop
this.’ He was being really harsh I am looking at him like ‘Are you kidding me? This poor
guy, I don’t know how he can even go back to the job.’ That was from very early on in
[my husband’s] career and that’s how I think he handled everything. I think he was just
like suck it up, this is your job … whatever you see, you put it in a box, you put it on the
shelf, and you keep on going. I think that was how his whole attitude was.
Elizabeth, spouse of Jeremy
Her husband died by suicide after a lengthy career in corrections, but this desire to
embody toughness and not show any weakness appeared to be acquired very early
on in the correctional career.
One of the youngest officers in our study, Adrian, died by suicide in his early 20s
within less than a year of taking the job as an officer. According to his family and
friends, Adrian struggled with what he was experiencing in the prison from the outset.
At first he would talk about his experiences with his family, but within a few months
he stopped talking. As he became increasingly more reluctant to talk about what was
happening at work, his mother confronted him and she described that conversation
to us:
[Adrian] said “I’ve learned to embrace the suck.” And I had such a visceral response to
that, I said “Whoa, what do you mean you’ve embraced the suck? What does that term
mean?” And he said “Well that’s what the officers say. That’s the mantra, you know you
suck it up, you deal with it.”
Barbara, mother of Adrian
This young officer struggled to ‘suck it up and deal with it’ from his earliest days in
the prison and died by suicide within a few months of that conversation with his
mother. Fear of being perceived as weak featured prominently in the lives (and poten-
tially the deaths) of the officers whether they were men or women. Another inter-
viewee explained that “[Alex] always felt like pride was more important than showing
weakness. That’s definitely it, I mean if I’ve said anything that has hit the nail on the
head, that felt right.” (Hayden, spouse of Alex).
One of the interviewees, who is not an officer, perceived that the bravado required
of officers in corrections is even greater than in other law enforcement occupations:
“They’ll talk for someone else, but it’s not about them. It’s the same way in the police,
and the same way in the army, you know it’s part of the code, it’s part of the code. If
you are going to be a man or you’re going to be a warrior, then you can’t show weak-
ness and I get that the DOC is the worst. It is the worst.” (Lucy, family friend
of Adrian).
We are certainly not the first to identify these aspects of the working culture
among correction officers. As Arnold (2005) has previously described in her study of
prison officers in England “officers, in abundance, described themselves as having
become hardened, cynical and detached … Having and expressing emotions and feel-
ings were perceived to be ‘maladaptive’ traits that hindered effective performance and
signified unprofessional behaviour … ” (p. 240).
The stigma of mental health and the perceived risks associated with seeking help
While mental illness remains quite stigmatized in the broader community, deteriorat-
ing mental health is particularly stigmatized in corrections (Ricciardelli, Carleton,
Mooney, & Cramm, 2020; Stergiou-Kita, Mansfield, Colantonio, Moody, & Mantis, 2016).
Applebaum and colleagues (2001), for example, have reported that “some correctional
staff … perceive mental health problems as character flaws” (p. 1344). Across many of
the interviews, there was not only a fear that deteriorating mental health would be
perceived as weakness, but also that it represented a potential threat to the officer’s
career. The family member of an officer described it this way:
I think in that environment it’s especially not, it’s not a help-seeking environment,
obviously, to work in. And there is the fear of the job, and you know, like ‘what if I show
that I have depression.’ You know, suddenly, they see it as ‘mental illness’ … depression
as being mental illness, that being stigmatized … I think what he was afraid of is …
[long pause] … I don’t think he wanted anyone to look at him differently like if he had
to get meds.
Rachel, sister of Tyler
According to family and friends, some of the officers who died knew they were in
acute crisis but felt there was no place they could turn. Several apparently worried
aloud that help-seeking would not only be perceived as weak but might cost them
their job as officers. Tyler’s family and friends were deeply concerned and trying to
intervene in the weeks leading up to his suicide. When confronted by family and
friends about getting the help that many in his life recognized he desperately needed,
Tyler repeatedly exclaimed “I don’t want to lose my job.” His sister Rachel said “that
came out of his mouth so many times ‘I just don’t want to lose my job. I can’t, I can’t
lose my job!’ Family members of this officer even implicated themselves as complicit
in avoiding help-seeking out of fear that doing so might put Tyler’s job in jeopardy:
That’s what bothered me when I really thought about it … I remember that day thinking
‘We need to do something. We need to probably admit him,’ but everybody – some of
the conversation, this is the truth, I’m just being honest - some of the conversation was
‘we can’t - his job, his job’ - and that’s the truth. I’m just being honest.
Rachel, sister of Tyler
Crawley (2004) similarly described the connections that prison officers made
between being perceived as weak and job security noting that “admitting to feeling
stressed is still perceived by many officers as an admission of mental weakness – one
which amounts to saying one can no longer do the job” (p.136) adding that “most
officers are simply reluctant to be seen as needing help” (p.137). Research on other
male dominated law enforcement occupations has similarly documented a deep-
seated reluctance to seek help, particularly for mental illness (Haugen, McCrillis, Smid,
& Nijdam, 2017; Karaffa & Koch, 2016).
Hanging on and the countdown to retirement

Relatedly, there was the desire to persevere no matter how much of an effect the job
was having on the officer’s wellbeing because the benefits of ‘making it to retirement’
were perceived as substantial. The wife of one of the officers who had a long success-
ful career and died by suicide shortly after retiring described it like this:
The last 10 years of his career he was not happy, not happy at all. He just hated his job.
He hated going to work every day … I feel like what happens with correction officers a
lot of the time is that, after a while they are doing time. You know what I mean? They
are doing their time, they’re counting their days … ‘I got 5 years, 2 months, 10 days left.’
They are counting, every one of them is. I was just talking to someone the other day
about it. I think that [he] felt so trapped in it because he had a family, he had a house,
we had bills, and he had to be with this job, with the great benefits and the good pay.
He had to stay there, you know he really didn’t have anything else to do.
Elizabeth, wife of Jeremy
As we interviewed family members and close friends who were also current or for-
mer officers themselves, this tendency to countdown to retirement was pronounced.
When we interviewed one officer about the death of his best friend (and former
colleague), we asked how long he himself had worked for the department and he
replied: “17 and a half years. I have [deep inhale] 2 years, 5 months, 26 days and I’m
out.” (Kevin, best friend and close colleague of Josh). The family member of another
officer also described this tendency to hang on and its effects on officers:
Ummm at, at that point he knew that he was going to get out in 20 years, you know? He
just wanted to get his pension … Yeah I think he had had it at that point. … once you
get to like 15 years in the department, it’s kind of a crazy thing, you just want to be done
with it, you just don’t want to do it anymore. So you just struggle the last 5 years,
you know?
Ron, correction officer and family member Tyler
In the interviews, family members and friends who were also officers themselves
were much more likely to discuss the impacts of correctional work, though they too
emphasized that the problems the officers were experiencing in the months leading
up to their suicides were primarily personal in nature. Nonetheless, these officers
argued that the work environment in corrections can be a very unforgiving place
when an officer is struggling personally. We conclude with a comment from Kevin,
who worked for many years alongside Josh at one of the two maximum security pris-
ons, and who articulated some of the specific ways in which personal and occupa-
tional pressures can interact to make an already bad situation worse for officers who
are struggling:
A lot of people go to work to get away from problems. It’s a stress relief. As crazy as it
sounds, a lot of people go to get away. But, when you go to work and you’re not quite
100 percent yourself, and people kick you while your down - they put you through hell -
the administration is playing stupid games. So, now you come to work miserable and you
leave even worse. Now, you go home and the problems at home are getting worse cause
you are aggravated. It keeps snowballing and snowballing and snowballing. That’s where
I feel the problem is. Instead of trying to help somebody, let’s make things worse. [sigh]
And when you work in a negative environment like that everyday [long pause], the job’s
hard enough alone without the BS.
Kevin, correction officer and close friend of Josh
Discussion
Although others have written comprehensive accounts of the personal and profes-
sional lives of correction officers (Crawley, 2004; Kauffman, 1988; Liebling, Price, &
Shefer, 2011), and there is an expansive literature on the impacts of working in correc-
tions on officer health and wellbeing (Brower, 2013; Butler et al., 2019; Ferdik & Smith,
2016), to our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive mixed-methods study of cor-
rection officer suicide specifically. The qualitative case studies described here represent
the beginning of our examination of this understudied phenomenon and are part of a
larger project with multiple objectives. Through extensive qualitative case studies we
sought to develop a rich understanding of a cluster of officer suicides that had
occurred and found that prominent risk factors for suicide including deteriorating
mental health, growing problems with substance abuse, and the debilitating effects of
chronic pain were certainly prevalent across the case studies (Chae & Boyle, 2013).
As Stack and Tsoudis (1997) suggested would likely be the case more than two dec-
ades ago, evidence from our case studies provides some support for the notion that
both “work and non-work circumstances contribute to the elevated risk of suicide” (p.
185). The findings reported here are based on thematic analysis of a small group of
cases in a single state that had experienced a ‘cluster’ suicides over a relatively short
period of time. The officers who were the object of our study had all died by suicide
at least several years prior and could not themselves participate; therefore, our find-
ings represent an ex-post facto and participant driven understanding of officer suicide
primarily from the perspective of others who knew the officers well. As with any early
research into an understudied phenomenon, replication and further study will
be important.
Nonetheless, across the case studies, we found considerable support for individual-
level interpersonal psychological theories of suicide (Joiner, 2005; Stanley et al., 2016;
Van Orden et al., 2010). It is perhaps not surprising that individual-level psychological
explanations for suicide emerge as particularly salient when examining a methodo-
logically small number of cases, but it was hard not to think about the importance of
the occupational context within which these suicides occurred. It is almost impossible
to conduct in depth case studies of officer suicides without realizing that the problem
of officer suicide in corrections quite simply cannot be one of individual (psycho-
logical) pathology alone. Even as we coded the individual cases and analyzed themes
that emerged across them, we found ourselves searching for something more to
explain why so many correction officers had died by suicide over such a short period
of time and, like many of our interview participants, returned repeatedly to the occu-
pational context in which these officer suicides had occurred.
By virtue of their occupation, correction officers have acquired the capability for sui-
cide that could potentially explain their elevated rates of suicide as a group. In devel-
oping his interpersonal theory, Joiner explicitly argued “one would predict that those
prone to suicide have witnessed, experienced, or engaged in more violence than
others, because violence exposure would be one way to habituate – either directly or
vicariously – to pain and provocation” (p.70) later emphasizing that “violence exposure
lowers barriers to injury in general, self-injury in particular” (p. 71). Among the exam-
ples he offers to support this proposition is of the high suicide rates among incarcer-
ated persons pointing out that they are regularly directly or vicariously exposed to
violence through their experience of incarceration. Our review of incident reports
revealed that there is no question that many of the officers who died by suicide expe-
rienced these same extensive violence exposures by virtue of their occupation. This
acquired capability for suicide, may indeed be a distinguishing feature that helps to
explain the elevated rates of suicide among those in occupations that have increased
exposures to violence (Spinaris et al., 2012; Stanley et al., 2016).
In many ways the qualitative research we have conducted in the ‘community’ of
officers working in a department of correction in the aftermath of a cluster of 20 sui-
cides over a period of six years parallels Mueller and Abrutyn’s research around a clus-
ter of 19 suicides over 15 years in one town. Through our interviews with loved ones
of officers who have died by suicide, including officers who still work at the depart-
ment, we began to realize that, just as Mueller and Abrutyn (2016) argued in the
context of a cluster of suicides in Poplar Grove, the interaction of individual-level psy-

chological factors and meso-level group dynamics and social processes might have
the greatest potential for explaining suicide among this population. In Poplar Grove,
Mueller and Abrutyn found that personal and mental health struggles at the individual
level were identifiable across many of the adolescent suicides that had occurred, but
argued that it was the interaction of those interpersonal struggles with the over regu-
lated and tightly integrated nature of the context of that particular community that
led to a cluster of suicides among adolescents there. The pressure on the adolescents
to succeed had been substantial and help-seeking was to be avoided because of its
potential to draw attention to personal failures. They conclude that “the stigma of
struggle, combined with the propensity for failures to become public knowledge, cre-
ates additional pressure … Ultimately, this constellation of factors suppresses help-
seeking and creates intense emotional pain … ” (p.892).
Through our extensive case study approach, we too were able to identify individual-
level psychological factors that helped explain the suicide deaths but features of the
occupational context emerged as important in similar ways. Expectations that officers
should ‘suck it up’ and deal with extensive exposures to violence together with the
stigma associated with both mental illness and help-seeking in the working culture of
corrections interacted with those individual-level risk factors across many of the suicides
we studied. None of our interviewees suggested working in prisons by itself led to the
suicide of their loved one, but many highlighted features of the work environment that
made it exceptionally difficult for the officers to admit that they were struggling or
reach out for help even when they knew they desperately needed it.
Conclusion
In the six weeks between the end of June and the middle of August 2020, three more
officers who were working for the department died by suicide. One of those officers
took the life of his estranged spouse who also worked for the department prior to tak-
ing his own life.11 Although the department and its officers were cautiously optimistic
that the cluster of officer suicides that we studied was behind them, these recent offi-
cer suicides have brought the issue right back to the forefront. Officers reach out to
us each time they learn of another suicide within the department. Moreover, as we
present our findings around the country, we are regularly approached by other
departments who express that they too are increasingly concerned about what they
perceive to be a significant increase in correction officer suicide in recent years. We
have learned over these past five years that the cluster of officer suicides in
Massachusetts that we had hoped might be an anomaly may not be an anomaly
at all.
Our research on officer suicide (of which these case studies were just a part) would
not be possible without the support of both the leadership of the Massachusetts
Department of Correction (MADOC) and of the officer’s union, the Massachusetts
11
Two of the officer suicides in our 2010–2015 timeframe also involved attempted homicide or homicide of a
current or former spouse or domestic partner making this the third homicide-suicide for this department in
a decade.
Correction Officers Federated Union (MCOFU). Although this article has focused on the
qualitative portion of the study for which the department primarily granted us access
to administrative records, in order to achieve some of the other objectives, we have
worked closely with the department to assess officer wellbeing and to better under-
stand the features of the workplace that are emerging as particularly problematic in
terms of behavioral and mental health outcomes among officers currently working in
the state’s prisons. While we could not have pursued this research without the support
and partnership of the department and the union, we mostly appreciate the officers
who go to work in the prisons every day, and the families, friends, and colleagues of
those officers who have died by suicide. We pursue this work with the goal of ultim-
ately informing the development of effective, evidence-based officer suicide preven-
tion initiatives that correction officers will be willing to engage with. Officer
engagement might be the most difficult to achieve, but given the number of people
the suicides of officers have affected, we are confident that the department, the union,
the officers who work in the prisons, and their families are motivated to partner with
us as we continue to work to better understand psychological distress and suicide
among officers with the ultimate goal of prevention.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we express our sincere gratitude to all of the officers, friends and family
members who participated in this research. We also thank Rhiana Kohl, who has been a partner
in this research from its inception, our colleagues at Riverside Trauma Center, and our grant
managers and science advisors at the National Institute of Justice, in particular Marie Garcia, Eric
Martin, and Angela Moore. We would also like to thank the lead resarch assistants Jessica
Trapassi and Stacie St. Louis, as well as all of the research assistants who worked on this project
over the past four years: Steven Heinz, Candence Wills, Beck Strah, Brad Luckett, Amy Gartland,
Maddison Stemple-Pilot, Margaret Abercrombie, Rahma Mohamed, Christina DeSantis, Ciara
Tenney, Emily Nayer, Bryan Bonnett, Miatta Harris, Caitlin Kloess, Haley Pereira, Kexin Cui, and
Taryn Koury. Finally we thank the anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts for their comments that
helped strengthen the article. Any shortcomings that remain are our own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This project was supported by Award No. 2016-MU-MU-0010, awarded by the National Institute
of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do
not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.
Notes on contributors
Natasha A. Frost is professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern
University in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Frost’s research focuses on the causes and
consequences of mass incarceration. She is co-author, with Todd Clear, of The Punishment
Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration (NYU Press, 2013). For the past five years,
Dr. Frost has been working collaboratively with the Massachusetts Department of Correction on
research related to officer wellbeing. In 2015 and 2016, Dr. Frost led data collection in
Massachusetts for a two-state study of correctional officer stress and in 2016, she was awarded
funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for a mixed-methods study designed to fur-
ther our understanding of the impacts of correctional officer suicide and to identify risk factors
for suicide and suicidal ideation among correction officers.
Carlos Monteiro is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at Suffolk University. Dr.
Monteiro’s research focuses largely on corrections and punishment with a specific focus on
recidivism and reentry. Most recently his work examines correctional environments including
the demands of correctional contexts on staff. He is a co-principal investigator on a National
Institute of Justice funded study on correctional officer wellbeing, with specific emphasis on offi-
cer suicide. In 2015, Dr. Monteiro earned his Ph.D. in criminology and justice policy from
Northeastern University.
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Justice Quarterly

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjqy20

The Interaction of Personal and Occupational

Natasha A. Frost & Carlos E. Monteiro

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2020.1839538

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The Interaction of Personal and Occupational Factors in

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Natasha A. Frost n.frost@northeastern.edu

The correctional work environment

Post-traumatic stress in correction officers

most strongly associated with traumatic or life-threatening injuries or with violence

The current study

Administrative file reviews

Demographic and officer characteristics

Direct and vicarious exposures to violence

The prevalence of known risk factors for suicide

In addition to the exposures to violence discussed previously, access to firearms

The occupational context

Sucking it up and dealing with it

Hanging on and the countdown to retirement

context of a cluster of suicides in Poplar Grove, the interaction of individual-level psy-

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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