Prison Suicide

INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW

Writing about “difficult prisoners” in his autobiography Fifty Years of Prison Service, Zebulon R. Brockway appeared perturbed by the prospect of managing suicidal inmates and by the resulting publicity in the event of their deaths. As superintendent of Elmira Reformatory (often described as the original model from which progressive penology evolved) from 1876 to 1900, Warden Brockway described his experience with three prison suicides: One, a prisoner on parole in New York City who violated his obligations, was taken for kindly investigation to the secretary of the Prison Association, at the rooms then situated in the third story of the Bible House. While awaiting the secretary’s convenience the young man suddenly dashed through an open window to his death on the pavement below. The newspapers made a sensational account of it and inquired why, if the reformatory was as it should be, a paroled man should voluntarily go to his death rather than be returned to treatment there.