Research Proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words - 1

Research Proposal - Essay Example There are various rationales for why a prison inmate harms the self, ranging from psychological disturbances to even attempts to manipulate the prison officers to elicit change to their incarceration circumstances. Self-harm is a phenomenon that occurs with both male and female prisoners, thus it is not a gender-specific problem within the prison system. Statistics indicate that female prisoners, in 2003, represented only six percent of the total prisoners incarcerated in the entire UK prison system, but female self-harm constituted 46 percent of all national reports of self-harm in the country (Borrill, Snow, Medlicott, Teers and Paton 2005). Self-harm in prisons is costly to the prison system, taxpayers, and the health care system for those that require psychological counselling and, oftentimes, recurring medical treatment for this activity. The severity of the problem justifies conducting a research study to analyse the catalysts of self-harm, especially with female inmates that represent nearly half of all national reports of self-harm. Prison officers and medical practitioners have multitudes of responsibility for ensuring prisoner safety, ensuring the integrity of the prison system, and providing health care services to a broader population. Self-harm recurrences and its prevalence in the UK add significant burdens to the health care system and for prison officers that must develop documentation of these events and provide supplementary mental health services to recognised problem prisoners. Examine socio-historical instances of negative lifestyle scenarios that might exist in female prisoners, including, but not limited to, previous childhood or spousal abuse, mental health conditions, or stunted cognitive/developmental growth during various phases of child and adolescent development. The broader purpose of the study is to identify and categorise, statistically, the most frequent and common catalysts of