Prison suicide: Suggestions from phenomenology

Abstract

This article examines suicide from a phenomenological perspective. The perceived subjective world of the inmate subculture is given careful consideration. The relationship between inmates’ race, socioeconomic status, and suicide is explained through a combination of phenomenological perspectives on deviance and suicide, theories of inmate social organization, and excerpts from inmate interviews and inmate poetry. Inference from these sources suggests that anomie occurs in inmates whose social reality orientation (before incarceration) is incongruent with that of the prison milieu. This results from a double‐deviant status being placed on the inmate who is deviant both by social and prison standards. The inmates most susceptible to a double‐deviant status are predominantly white and middle‐class. For these inmates, reality becomes anomic and suicide becomes a cognitive alternative to a meaningless situation and an alternative to their socially constructed sense of reality.