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Primary Submission Category: Mental health/function
Does Religiosity Moderate the Association between Criminal Justice System Contact and Suicidality?
Authors: Andrew London, Jong Hyun Jung, Alex Bierman,
Presenting Author: Andrew London*
This study focuses on encounters with the criminal justice system and suicidality (thought about, planned, attempted) among emerging adults (18-29 years old) using pooled data from the 2021-2023 National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) (N=50,203). The NSDUH survey includes the following questions: “The next questions are about encounters with the police or the court system. Not counting minor traffic violations, have you ever been arrested and booked for breaking the law? Being “booked” means that you were taken into custody and processed by the police or by someone connected with the courts, even if you were then released.” This question is then repeated substituting “during the past 12 months” for “ever.” Our focal independent variable measures no, past, and recent (past 12 months) arrest/booking. Drawing on the stress process model, we specifically examine the extent to which religiosity (attendance, personal religiosity, friend religiosity) moderates associations between criminal justice contact and suicidality among emerging adults. Specifically, we test a stress-buffering hypothesis, which predicts that higher religiosity will weaken the consequences of being arrested/booked for suicidality, and a violation of moral worlds hypothesis, which predicts that higher religiosity will exacerbate the consequences of being arrested/booked for suicidality. To test these hypotheses, we estimate multivariable logistic regression models and examine average marginal effects (AMEs) and second differences in them. Preliminary analyses indicate some support for both hypotheses, conditional on which measures of religiosity and suicidality are used in the analysis. We are in the process of expanding the analysis to examine a three-way interaction with race. With a focus on young adulthood, results from this study will provide novel, population-representative evidence at the nexus of criminal justice system contact, religiosity, and suicidality.