Date of Award

Spring 5-20-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Keyne C. Law, PhD

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Thane Erickson, PhD

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Kayla L. Carson, PsyD

Abstract

Preventable deaths during law enforcement encounters, particularly those violent in nature, such as suicide and homicide deaths, are of considerable public concern. Prebooking, the law enforcement custody stage that includes arrest, serving warrants, wellness checks, traffic stops is often the most dangerous and fatal stage of custody. Despite being the most potentially dangerous and unpredictable of any custody stage, prebooking remains grossly understudied in comparison to jail and prison research, underscoring the need for focused research. To address this gap, the present study examines risk factors for suicide and homicide deaths among individuals with sex-related offenses during prebooking custody. Individuals with sex-related offenses are also an understudied population, particularly within the context of prebooking custody. Using decedent records from the Texas Justice Initiative, a hierarchical binary logistic regression was conducted with two models conducted: Suicide vs. Other Manners of Death Model and Homicide vs. Other Manners of Death. The models examined risk for suicide and homicide deaths versus all other manners of death (natural, accidental, undetermined). Age was included as a covariate in Block 1, with Race (White, Black, Hispanic/Latine, Other) and Offense Type (Sex Offenses, Non-Sex Offenses) added in Block 2. Block 3 included the interaction effect Offense Type*Race. Results for the Suicide v. Other Model indicated a 5 times increased risk for suicide death for individuals with sex offenses (OR: 5.515) versus individuals with non-sex offenses. White individuals demonstrated this highest risk (OR: 1.87 compared to Black; 2.10 compared to Hispanic/Latine) for suicide deaths. Age, included as a covariate to control for potential confounding effects was significant in Homicide v. Other model but non-significant when predictors were added in Suicide v. Other Manners of Death Model. In Homicide vs. Other model, only Hispanic/Latine compared to White individuals and Other race/ethnicity compared to Black race/ethnicity was associated with significantly increased risk for homicide death versus other manners of death (White-Ref: OR: 1.29; Black-Ref: OR: 1.34). Offense type was not significant in Homicide vs. Other model and interaction effects were non-significant in both models. Last, data extraction revealed patterns indicating White males with child-victim offenses were most associated with suicide death, while Black and Hispanic/Latine individuals most associated with adult-victim offenses were homicide death. Violent, serious offenses predominated the sex offending population.

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