Utilizing Peer Safety Companions to Prevent Suicide in Prisons

A variety of strategies have been implemented to identify, target, and prevent suicide in correctional settings. In recent decades, some prisons have adopted policies that use other incarcerated individuals to support people who have been identified as being at high risk of suicide. There has been little research on these policies and, of the few studies that have been conducted, all have relied on data from a single facility. This study takes a national approach by exploring how many departments of corrections (DOCs) include incarcerated individuals as part of their suicide prevention strategies and the characteristics of those programs. This study is an analysis of suicide prevention policies from state DOCs and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in the United States. The BOP and 15 state DOCs have written policies pertaining to the use of incarcerated individuals as components of suicide prevention programs. These programs differ in their expectations for incarcerated individuals, with some focusing solely on observation of people in crisis and others emphasizing befriending and mentoring.