The Death of Offenders in Switzerland
| Author | Ghazala Sattar,Martin Killias |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370805054100 |
| Published date | 01 July 2005 |
| Date | 01 July 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Volume 2 (3): 317–340: 1477-3708
DOI: 101177/1477370805054100
Copyright © 2005 European Society of
Criminology and SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, and New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
The Death of Offenders in Switzerland
Ghazala Sattar
Office for National Statistics, UK
Martin Killias
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
A B S T R A C T
Death of prisoners has been a topic of concern for many years. Most studies
have been focused on suicide among prison inmates and among populations of
comparable age and sex. Such comparisons have usually shown suicide rates to
be considerably higher among prisoners, and the prevailing conclusion has been
that prison conditions are the major cause of this difference. Recent research in
England and Wales suggests, however, that suicide rates are also unusually high
among offenders in the community. If other causes of unnatural death are
included, the gap between prisoners and offenders not in custody narrows
further. To date, relevant research has tended to be limited to England and a few
other English-speaking countries; therefore the present study was conducted in
order to determine how far the conclusions might hold more generally. The
Swiss data presented here confirm that unnatural death is rather common
among offenders outside prison. Despite some differences in frequency of
suicide and other unnatural causes of death among prisoners in England and
Switzerland (which may be due to differences in sentencing and other policies),
the overall picture of mortality in prisons suggests many similarities between the
two countries.
K E Y W O R D S
Drugs / Prisoners / Suicide / Switzerland / Violent Death.
Introduction
The death of offenders has received attention from researchers, policy
makers and the public. Most of the attention has been centred on the
suicide of prisoners. This is because suicide is the biggest killer of prisoners
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European Journal of Criminology 2(3)
in many countries. For example, in England and Wales (Sattar 2001) and
Australia (Dalton 1999) suicide was found to account for around half of all
deaths of prisoners. In Europe and Australia, the prison suicide rate is
reported to be between three and 11 times the general community rate, and
in the USA, the prison suicide rate is between five and 15 times the general
community rate (Liebling 1992; Nock and Marzuk 2000). In contrast,
other types of death and other types of offenders have received less
attention.
Studies have identified risk factors that increase an offender’s motiva-
tion to commit suicide during confinement. Some of these factors are
related to prisoners’ personal history, while others are related to the
circumstances of imprisonment. For example, age, sex, unemployment
prior to imprisonment, psychiatric illness, alcohol and drug abuse, a history
of self-harming behaviour and social disadvantage/isolation have been
found to be correlated with suicide while being in prison. In some studies,
these factors are also related to suicide in the community and are not
specifically related to imprisonment. These same risk factors are also
heavily over-represented among the prison population in most countries.
Most prison suicide studies have used the general population for
comparison purposes; however, these two populations differ in terms of
socio-demographic and criminal history factors. Young males are over-
represented in prison, whereas the different sexes and ages are more evenly
distributed in the general population. There is also an over-representation
in prison populations of the minority ethnic groups, the lower social
classes, the less well educated, and those with physical and mental health
problems (see Sattar 2001).
This has led some researchers to take account of some of the
differences between the prison and general population. In the USA, Winfree
(1985) took account of the gender, age and race differences between the
prison and general populations, and found that the suicide rate for
prisoners was five to 15 times the rate for the general population, and
prisoners had lower death rates for natural causes and homicides.
Other researchers have examined the death of people more compar-
able with the prison population, such as those with mental illness.1 In the
UK, the Department of Health (2001) looked at people with mental illness,
who before committing suicide had been in contact with mental health
services. Around one-quarter of these suicides had been in contact with
mental health services in the year before death. Hanging and overdoses
were the most common methods used. Younger suicides more often had a
1 There is an over-representation of the mentally ill among the prison population (Blaauw et
al. 2000).
Sattar and Killias
The death of offenders in Switzerland
319
history of schizophrenia, personality disorders and drug and alcohol abuse.
Most suicides with schizophrenia were unemployed and unmarried.
Around one-quarter of suicides occurred within three months of discharge
from in-patient care, with post-discharge suicides peaking in the first one to
two weeks following discharge. In another UK study, King and Barraclough
(1990) looked at violent death among people with mental illness in a single
hospital catchment area, over an eight-year period. The risk of violent
death (suicide, accidental and undetermined) for people who died within
one year of their last psychiatric contact was 27 times higher than for
residents in the same catchment area with no recent psychiatric contact.
Risk was highest for 35 to 44-year-olds and lowest for 75 years and
over.
It is also important to collect death data on other groups of offenders.
A few studies have examined the death of offenders serving sentences in the
community; these offenders are known to be reasonably similar to
prisoners in terms of socio-demographic and criminal history character-
istics (Sattar 2001). Pritchard et al. (1997) found probationers in Dorset,
England, to have a mortality rate more than double that of the local male
population and a suicide rate of at least nine times that of the local
male population. Biles et al. (1999) found offenders serving correction
orders in Victoria, Australia, to suffer from a higher risk of death than
the general community and offenders in custody. In Australia and New
Zealand, Flemming et al. (1992) found higher mortality rates for non-
custodial offenders than custodial offenders. Further, parolees had a higher
mortality rate than probationers and offenders serving community service
orders. Joukamaa (1998) compared the mortality of recently-released male
prisoners with an age-matched male general population. Ex-prisoners were
statistically significantly more likely to suffer from natural deaths, acci-
dental deaths and all deaths, than the control group. Escard et al. (2003)
found a strong correlation between self-reported suicide attempts and
violent offences in a sample of 21,314 Swiss males aged 20 in the general
population, suggesting that suicide is also much more common among non-
convicted offenders. In England and Wales, Sattar (2001) compared the
nature and extent of death of prisoners with offenders serving community
sentences and ex-prisoners being supervised in the community (community
offenders) and the general population. Standardized mortality ratios for
males, showed that community offenders were more vulnerable to death
than prisoners: community offenders were at least 10 times and prisoners
were at least eight times more at risk of suicide, and community offenders
were around seven times and prisoners were less than two times at risk of
accidental death, relative to the general population. Overall, the limited
literature suggests that non-custodial offenders and certain vulnerable
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European Journal of Criminology 2(3)
groups of society may be at least as much at risk of violent death (in
particular suicide) as prisoners.
Present research
The present study examined the nature and extent of death among
prisoners and other adult offenders in Switzerland.2 The original idea had
been to replicate the methodology of Sattar (2001) in a different social,
cultural and legal context, namely Switzerland; however, as will be ex-
plained later, this was not quite possible, although what was achieved was
very worthwhile.
While the data for England and Wales are from the study by Sattar
(2001), the Swiss data were collected on two groups of adult offenders:
1.
all convicted prisoners who died in 1984–2000; and
2.
a sample of finger-printed persons in the general population who had died in
1997–2001.
Switzerland has a typical continental legal system, mostly influenced by
France and Germany (Trechsel and Killias, 2004). Its constitution is,
however, more in line with the USA. Thus, prisons are run by cantonal
correctional authorities, although criminal law has been unified since 1942.
As a result, federal bodies (such as the Office f´ed´eral de la statistique) have
powers to collect data concerning prisoners convicted of offences against
the Swiss Criminal Code only. No individual data on prisoners on remand
is available, which is unfortunate given the high suicide rates among
prisoners awaiting trial. The absence of such data makes comparisons of
Swiss prison suicide rates considerably more difficult. Another important
difference between Swiss institutions and those in England and in other
English-speaking countries is that sentences in Switzerland are considerably
shorter, even for those convicted of relatively serious offences.3 Given that
prison suicide rates do not remain stable over the...
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