Suicide Prevention and Intervention Strategies by Law Enforcement Agencies: Utilization, Characteristics and Costs

This award was competitively made in response to a proposal submitted by RAND Corporation to a National Institute of Justice FY 2015 solicitation "Research into the use of Suicide Prevention and Intervention Strategies by Law Enforcement Agencies"

With this solicitation, NIJ sought proposals for innovative, rigorous, research to identify and characterize the suicide prevention and intervention strategies currently being used by law enforcement agencies in the United States and, potentially, elsewhere. NIJ is particularly interested in understanding the rationale for the adoption of a particular strategy and what evidence may exist regarding its efficacy.

RAND proposes a study to examine how law enforcement agencies of various types, in different locations, with distinct missions, serving diverse populations, and most importantly employing different personnel, are attempting to prevent suicide among their employees. It does not propose to to quantify how many agencies are administering different approaches to suicide prevention. Consequently, it does not propose to develop and implement a a national representative sample. Rather, it proposes.to employ maximum variation sampling, followed by iterative theoretical sampling based on its researchers’ expertise and success in using this approach to answer similar questions concerning suicide intervention modalities in other populations. RAND proposes to use semi-structured interiews with law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe to learn about the programs and practices they have in place to prevent suicide among their employees, their rationale for adopting them, the resources required to implement these programs, and why other approaches have not been adopted. The sample will be drawn theoretically to maximize variability upon constructs by which RAND anticipate agencies’ approaches to suicide will differ (e.g., region, size, population served). The iterative nature of the analytic approach is intended to ensure that as new, salient constructs emerge during data collection, they are incorporated into subsequent sampling to ensure that all new relationships and constructs are fully explored. This process will continue until the point of saturation, which is expected to be after 150 agencies across the United States and Europe have been interviewed.

This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.

ca/ncf