Measuring Law
Enforcement Suicide

Challenges and Opportunities

______

Katrina Baum Stone, Rapporteur

Committee on National Statistics

Division of Behavioral and
Social Sciences and Education

Proceedings of a Workshop

NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001

This activity was supported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Support of the work of the Committee on National Statistics is provided by a consortium of federal agencies through a grant from the National Science Foundation (award number SES-1560294) and several individual contracts. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-70876-0
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-70876-1
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/27216

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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Measuring Law Enforcement Suicide: Challenges and Opportunities: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/27216.

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PLANNING COMMITTEE FOR APROACHES TO IMPROVING THE MEASUREMENT OF DEATH BY SUICIDE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN THE UNITED STATES

JOEL GREENHOUSE (Co-Chair), Carnegie Mellon University

VICKIE M. MAYS (Co-Chair), University of California, Los Angeles

BRANDON DEL POZO, Brown University

NATASHA FROST, Northeastern University

JANICE IWAMA, Law and Criminology American University

JENNIFER RINEER, RTI International

JOHN VIOLANTI, University at Buffalo

Staff

KATRINA BAUM STONE, Study Director

MADELEINE GOEDICKE, Senior Program Assistant

COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL STATISTICS

KATHARINE ABRAHAM, Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park

MICK P. COUPER, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

DIANA FARRELL, JPMorgan Chase Institute, Washington, DC

ROBERT GOERGE, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

ERICA L. GROSHEN, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

DANIEL E. HO, Stanford Law School, Stanford University

HILARY HOYNES, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

DANIEL KIFER, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University

SHARON LOHR, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Emerita

NELA RICHARDSON, ADP Research Institute, Roseland, NJ

C. MATTHEW SNIPP, School of the Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University

ELIZABETH A. STUART, Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Staff

MELISSA CHIU, Director

BRIAN HARRIS-KOJETIN, Senior Scholar

CONSTANCE F. CITRO, Senior Scholar

Reviewers

This Proceedings of a Workshop was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in making each published proceedings as sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process.

We thank the following individuals for their review of this proceedings:

Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the content of the proceedings, nor did they see the final draft before its release. The review of this proceedings was overseen by JERI MULROW, Westat. She was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this proceedings was carried out in accordance with standards of the National Academies and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the rapporteur and the National Academies.

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Acknowledgments

The rapporteur is grateful to Alexia Cooper from the Bureau of Justice Statistics for facilitating connections with several federal agencies. Research and support for the planning committee, staff, and a successful virtual workshop that engaged a virtual audience was greatly enhanced by Theresa Patten, who was a Christine Mirzayan science and technology policy fellow in the spring of 2023.

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Contents

Acronyms and Abbreviations

1 Introduction

2 Primary Sources for Measuring Suicide—Federal Data Sets

LAW ENFORCEMENT DATA SOURCES

PUBLIC HEALTH DATA SOURCES

PRIMARY DATA SETS DISCUSSION

3 Additional Data Sources for Measuring Suicide

DATA PIPELINE

ADDITIONAL STUDIES

DISCUSSION OF ADDITIONAL DATA SOURCES

LESSONS LEARNED FROM MILITARY DATA SOURCES

4 Complexities of Death Classification and Sources of Bias

PERSPECTIVE OF A PSYCHOLOGIST

CHALLENGES OF DETERMINING MANNER OF DEATH

RESEARCH ON THE ROLE OF SYSTEMIC AND UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

THE IMPACT OF STIGMA ON REPORTING AND BIAS

5 Methods for Measuring Suicide

DATA LINKAGE

CAPTURE-RECAPTURE

COMBINING MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES

VISION FOR A 21ST-CENTURY DATA INFRASTUCTURE

NEW MEASUREMENTS IN THE NEW DATA INFRASTRUCTURE

LINKING LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONAL IDENTIFICABLE INFORMATION WITH THE NATIONAL DEATH INDEX

DISCUSSION

6 Connecting Measurement to the Human Aspect of Suicide

POLICING PERSPECTIVES

CORRECTIONS PERSPECTIVES

VOICES FROM THE FIELD

7 Possible Future Directions

COMMITTEE REFLECTIONS

SPONSOR AGENCY REFLECTIONS

ADJOURNMENT

References

Appendix A Public Meeting Agenda

Appendix B Biosketches

Appendix C Sample of Relevant Data Collections

Boxes, Figures, and Tables

BOXES

1-1 Statement of Task

1-2 Mission of the Committee on National Statistics

2-1 Key Definitions in the Law Enforcement Suicide Data Collection

5-1 Seven Attributes of a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure

5-2 Takeaways from the Vision for a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure

6-1 Wellness Programs in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections

FIGURES

2-1 Correlates of suicide rates per 100,000 population

3-1 A model law enforcement officer suicide data pipeline

3-2 Documented family violence and risk of suicide attempt

4-1 Interpersonal theory of suicide

5-1 Example of a linkage process

5-2 Framework for integrating unstructured data into the traditional model of empirical research

5-3 Characteristics of structured and unstructured data for social sciences

TABLES

2-1 Data Elements Collected in the Suicide Mitigation and Risk Reduction Tracking System

2-2 States Added to the National Violent Death Reporting System by Year

2-3 Latent Topics in the Summaries of Unstructured Data Using Machine Learning Methods

2-4 Sections and Selected Variables in the Public Safety Officer Suicide Module to the NVDRS

2-5 Data Elements Used to Compare Suicides and Nonsuicides

2-6 Commonly Used National Databases for Law Enforcement Officer Suicide and Occupational Coding Research

3-1 Data Collected by Blue H.E.L.P.

5-1 Data Integration Examples to Study Law Enforcement Suicide

Acronyms and Abbreviations