Report
Key Findings, Analysis & Recommendations
This report combines qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals and analysis of the 2023 HMIP Prisoner Survey to offer new insights into how self-destructive behaviours are shaped by structural conditions. Rather than framing these acts as individual pathologies, the report understands them as socially situated practices of survival, resistance, and meaning-making.
What is Queer Interventions on Self-harm in Prison?
The research includes:
Qualitative interviews with 18 formerly incarcerated individuals of diverse gender, age, and ethnic backgrounds, many of whom described long-term patterns of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance use prior to and during imprisonment.
Quantitative analysis of the 2023 HMIP Prisoner Survey (n=5781), highlighting patterns of ambivalence, mistrust, and deteriorating mental health, particularly among those who entered prison already feeling suicidal.
Key Findings
This report explores the meanings, patterns, and responses to self-harm and suicide in UK prisons through a mixed-methods approach that combines original qualitative interviews with secondary analysis of the HMIP Prisoner Survey.
Drawing on queer theory and critical suicide studies, the report reframes self-destructive behaviours not as symptoms of individual pathology, but as socially situated practices of survival, resistance, and meaning-making under carceral conditions.
Institutional responses to suicide and self-harm often intensified harm, with constant watch, sedation, and surveillance described as punitive rather than supportive.
Self-harm presented as excitement-inducing and or comforting and help the participants to avoid suicide.
Suicidal ideation was not isolated or episodic, but an ongoing mental state that many participants experienced as part of daily life—even after release.
Peer relationships emerged as the only credible form of care, with participants repeatedly describing the Listener scheme and informal solidarity as more effective than formal interventions.
Gendered and racialised assumptions shaped access to care, with institutional practices reinforcing stereotypes of male self-reliance and female vulnerability
Recommendations
The report offers recommendations across three levels:
Theoretical: Support spectrum-based, non-pathologising, and intersectional approaches to understanding self-destruction, suicidal thought and self-harm.
Policy and Practice: Recognise the structural limits of prison care, and support peer-led, relational responses without extracting unpaid emotional labour.
Clinical: The report provides a conceptual tool for clinicians to better engage with the functions of self-harm, which can be experienced as positive or adaptive by the person.