A Series on Correctional Staff Suicide Risk and Paths to Prevention

At Desert Waters, the issue of correctional staff suicide remains at the forefront of our minds. We continue to receive messages from across the country about staff who have died by suicide. We cannot simply read the news and move on. A concerted, proactive effort is needed—one that goes far beyond a one-hour training on recognizing the signs of suicidal thinking.

With this article, we begin a series examining the complex and interrelated factors that increase correctional staff’s risk for suicide—and exploring what can be done to reduce that risk and strengthen protective factors. This series has several goals:

  • To address the multifaceted causes of correctional staff suicide
  • To examine the interplay between individual vulnerabilities and occupational stressors
  • To challenge stigma surrounding mental health struggles and seeking support
  • To promote systemic change by fostering healthier, more supportive workplace cultures—with policies and resources that protect and sustain staff well-being
  • To advance prevention strategies that strengthen constructive coping skills and resilience

When Strength Becomes a Trap: How Correctional Culture Can Fuel Officer Suicide

Summary

This article explores how culturally reinforced hypermasculinity—characterized by adherence to traditional masculine norms—may contribute to the elevated suicide rates observed among male correctional officers. It also considers how such norms can affect women in the corrections workforce. A study of the Massachusetts Department of Correction reported that between 2010 and 2015, correctional officers died by suicide at a rate of roughly 105 per 100,000—about seven times the national suicide rate for U.S. adults (Frost, 2020). Additional research finds that the risk of death by suicide among correctional officers is approximately 39–41% higher than in the general working-age population (Stack & Tsoudis, 1997; Violanti, 2017).

Note: The term suicide rate refers to the number of actual confirmed suicides, while suicide risk refers to the probability or likelihood of death by suicide for a given population.

Understanding Correctional Officers’ Suicide Rates and Risk

A colleague recently asked a question that has stayed with me: Beyond the well-documented stresses of the job, is there a pre-existing tendency among those who choose corrections that makes them especially vulnerable to suicide?

This seemingly simple question highlights a tension often observed in corrections: the personal characteristics—particularly strengths—that draw individuals to the profession can interact with occupational culture in ways that gradually erode resilience.

Individual and Cultural Factors

This article focuses primarily on male correctional officers, as most studies either report male-specific data or do not specify the gender of decedents. In the general population, men die by suicide three to four times more often than women (National Center for Health Statistics, 2024), a pattern that extends to police officers (Violanti et al, 2018).

Men who enter corrections may be drawn to the profession because they identify with traditional masculine norms, which are perceived as aligned with the demands of the job. These traits include:

  • Emotional restriction: Reluctance or difficulty expressing emotions other than anger.
  • Self-reliance: Reluctance to seek help, limiting social support.
  • Risk-taking: Comfort with or attraction to high-risk situations.

These traits are strongly associated with increased suicide risk. Men who score highly on these characteristics have more than twice the lifetime risk of dying by suicide compared to those who do not (Coleman et al., 2020), and more than twice the risk of a lifetime suicide attempt (Eggenberger et al. 2024). They also tend to express distress physically (e.g., headaches, fatigue), externalize emotions through anger or aggression, and hold beliefs that emotional pain is unbearable (Eggenberger et al., 2024).

However, personality and cultural factors alone cannot account for the high suicide risk among correctional officers. In one study, male police officers, who similarly conform to traditional masculine norms, had less than half the suicide rate observed in correctional officers (New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force Report, 2009). Additionally, correctional officers experience higher rates of PTSD than police officers (Jaegers et al., 2019).

I propose that a major contributor to elevated suicide rates of correctional officers is not pre-existing vulnerability, but the strong adoption of the prevailing correctional culture’s norms. This culture of toughness reinforces emotional restriction, extreme self-reliance, risk-taking, and externalized anger—factors that heighten psychological strain and erode mental health and resilience. Over time, officers who internalize these norms may become increasingly at risk for suicide when under significant emotional strain.

The Role of Occupational Culture

Correctional officers may not enter the profession with strongly internalized traditional masculinity values. Yet, U.S. corrections culture and working conditions often demand adherence to these norms.

During emergencies or high-stress situations, it is vital not to be overcome by emotion. Officers must remain focused and task-oriented—lives may depend on it. Many supervise large groups alone, requiring self-reliance, decisiveness, and comfort with risk. In this context, traditional masculine traits can be adaptive, even lifesaving.

The problem arises when these traits become the default response, applied indiscriminately to all situations, including those requiring reflection, emotional processing, and human connection. There is a time to “keep it together” and a time to process experiences and their impact.

Many corrections cultures elevate hypermasculinity, perhaps as a misguided strategy to enhance safety. New officers are often conditioned—through peer pressure and role modeling—to suppress emotions (except anger), avoid seeking help, and treat risk-taking as a badge of toughness. These norms stigmatize emotional expression and enforce a “code of silence” regarding emotional distress. As one officer joked about his institution’s Emergency Response Team: “They hose the decks down with testosterone.” This shaping influence may be less pronounced among police officers, who typically are not confined inside a facility for most of their shifts.

Over time, hypermasculinity norms can become deeply internalized, shaping thoughts and behaviors in subtle but powerful ways. Emotional expression is suppressed, help-seeking discouraged, and unhealthy coping patterns emerge—amplifying suicide risk when distress escalates and officers perceive no honorable path forward other than suicide.

Women in Corrections: Navigating a Masculine Culture

These dynamics are not limited to men. Women correctional officers may also feel pressure to adopt traditionally masculine traits to avoid ridicule, exclusion, or dismissal, and to earn the respect of male peers by demonstrating they can meet the demands of the job.

In this context, women’s assimilation into a traditional masculine culture can become a strategy for acceptance and credibility—a perceived requirement for belonging within the “Brotherhood” (Murphy et al, 2004). These observations underscore the need for future research to determine whether women correctional officers experience higher suicide rates than women police officers or women in the general population, clarifying gender-specific suicide risks within corrections. In fact, although the sample was small, the only study identified on this topic reported that the age-adjusted suicide risk for women correctional personnel was nearly twice that of U.S. women in the general workforce (Violanti, 2017).

Toward Systemic Healing

Meaningful suicide prevention requires confronting hypermasculinity as the default ideal in all situations. Efforts must extend beyond individual strategies to address organizational, cultural, and policy dimensions.

Systemic change should prioritize:

  • Leadership development that dismantles stigmatizing norms, promotes psychological safety, and reframes vulnerability as courage.
  • Accessible, properly trained peer support services.
  • Evidence-based, trauma-responsive training to strengthen constructive coping and emotional processing.
  • Confidential mental health resources and compassionate postvention following any known suicide or attempt.
  • Organizational health initiatives addressing Emotional Intelligence (EQ), distress tolerance, supervisory support, and quarterly voluntary confidential mental health check-ins.

A comprehensive approach—integrating top-down (organizational), bottom-up (individual), and lateral (coworker-to-coworker) interventions, while also considering family life—offers the most promising path forward.

Conclusion: Restoring Humanity in Corrections

At its heart, this work is about restoring what correctional environments often take away: connection, compassion, and permission to be human. Officers must feel they can be vulnerable, have limits, and still be worthy of respect and belonging. Addressing suicide risk in corrections requires both individual and systemic attention, creating a culture where strength and humanity coexist.

References

Coleman, D., Feigelman, W., & Rosen, Z. (2020). Association of High Traditional Masculinity and Risk of Suicide Death: Secondary Analysis of the Add Health Study. JAMA psychiatry, 77(4), 435–437. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.4702

Eggenberger, L., Spangenberg, L., Genuchi, M.C., & Wlther, A. (2024.) Men’s suicidal thoughts and behaviors and conformity to masculine norms. A person-centered, latent profile approach.Heliyon, Volume 10, Issue 20, doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e39094

Frost, N. A. (2020). Understanding the impacts of corrections officer suicide (NCJ 254473). National Institute of Justice. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/understanding-impacts-corrections-officer-suicide

Jaegers, Lisa A. PhD; Matthieu, Monica M. PhD; Vaughn, Michael G. PhD; Werth, Paul MS; Katz, Ian M. MS; Ahmad, Syed Omar PhD. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Job Burnout Among Jail Officers. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 61(6):p 505-510, June 2019. | DOI: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000001600

Murphy, D.S., terry, C.M., Newbold, C., & Richards, S.C. (2004). Women Guarding Men. https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/women_guarding.pdf

National Center for Health Statistics. (2024). Suicide Mortality in the United States, 2002–2022 (NCHS Data Brief No. 509). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Jersey Police Suicide Task Force Report. (2009). http://www.state.nj.us/lps/library/NJPoliceSuicideTaskForceReport-January-30-2009-Final(r2.3.09).pdf

Stack, S., & Tsoudis, O. (1997). Suicide risk among correctional officers: A logistic regression analysis. Archives of Suicide Research, 3(3), 183–186.

Violanti, J. M. (2017). Suicide behind the wall: A national analysis of corrections officer suicide. Suicidology Online, 8, 138–144.

Violanti, J. M., Charles, L. E., Hartley, T. A., Mnatsakanova, A., Fekedulegn, D., & Burchfiel, C. M. (2018). Police stressors and health: A state‑of‑the‑art review. Policing: An International Journal, 41(4), 642–656. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-03-2018-0048 PMC