Suicide in Prisons: Active Deviation Profile

The interpretative path of suicide finds its maximum expression in the theorizations of Èmile Durkheim who classifies suicide as a social pathology and as a result of a general social fragility. The more generic theme of "deaths" in prison began to arouse the interest of scholars around the mid-19th century, a period in which "suicide death" was linked to the influence of both exogenous factors, such as socio-family environmental ones and socio-relational before prisonization and suitable for suicide, which are endogenous, referable to the status of prisoner, regardless of the nature of the individual, his cognitive abilities and his adaptation skills. Often, the institution's attitude towards the "suicidal" or "attempting suicide" prisoner coincides with the labeling of a subject deemed insane and the self-suppressive conduct almost always an expression of active deviance