Suicides Within the Juvenile Justice System: The Need for Administrative Oversight Written by: Jails and Prison Expert Witness Expert Witness No. 136
	Suicides among youths in the United States is a national tragedy. A successful suicide by an adolescent within the juvenile justice system is both preventable and unconscionable and tends to occur as a consequence of poor or inappropriate staffing, inadequate training, and/or the lack of policy and procedure enforcement. Suicides among detained youth can and should be prevented and the role and responsibility of court and probation
administrators with regard to detention facility oversight sadly have been neglected.
Unfortunately, we have not always had accurate and up-to-date data on attempted and successful suicides among youths detained in correctional facilities. According to a report prepared a couple of decades ago (Memory, 2005), it was reported that detained youths were "...four to five times more likely to be the victim of suicide than were similarly aged youths in the general U.S. population." According to Snyder (2005:84) and based on National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data, recent rates for suicide vary among different juvenile population groups:
The average annual suicide rate is greater for 17-year-olds than 14-year-olds (9.6 versus 3.8),greater for males than females ages 12 through 17 (17.6 versus 2.2), and greater for American Indian youths and non-Hispanic white youths ages 12 through 17 than for similarly aged Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black youths (10.8, 5.6, 3.6, and 3.4 respectively).
For adults, the leading cause of deaths in U.S. jails is suicide (Goss, J. R., 2002) while in prisons it ranks third as the primary cause (Couturier & F. R. Maue, 2000). In a study conducted in England and Wales (Fazel, et al, 2005), Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMRs) were calculated for different age groups in terms of suicides. It was found that the age-specific suicide rate for all ages for those incarcerated was 5.1. However, for detained boys ages 15 to 17, the rate was an astonishing 18. It was also found that suicide has been about five times more common among male prisoners (all ages) in England and Wales than in the general male population. Fazel, et al, (2005:2) conclude "...that this excess is...particularly striking among incarcerated boys, and it has been steadily increasing over recent decades."
MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS
It has become common knowledge that many detained youths have mental health problems, which is recognized as a critical risk factor that can lead to suicides. In fact, as Grisso, et al (2001) report, while youth in the U.S. make up an average of 20 percent of those being supervised among juvenile justice agencies, their level of mental health disorders is higher and, in fact, according to Pumariega (1994), the level has even been likened to patients in mental hospitals. Read more on this article