Stress And Self-Injury In Jail

By John J. Gibbs

FROM THE ABSTRACT: “This dissertation explores the relationship between confinement setting (jail or prison) and self-destructive crises with special emphasis on the jail setting. The assumptions tested are (1) different incarceration environments pose different problems for the men they confine, and (2) jail is a more stressful environment than prison. These assumptions are examined by (1) comparing the personal characteristios of samples of self-destructive inmates in jail and prison with random samples of their respective populations, and (2) comparing jail and prison motives for self-destruction which emerged from interviews with men who injured themselves in jail or prison. The dissertation relies on 333 tape recorded and transcribed interviews with men who had injured themselves while confined and 77 control interviews with men who had not infured themselves while incarcerated…..”

Albany, NY. School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York. Dissertation. August, 1978. 349p.