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Background: Previous research has focused on suicide among male prisoners and ex-prisoners, but little is known about this outcome in the wider offender population, or how risk varies by judicial outcome and by type of crime.We examined risk of suicide over 3 decades among all people charged with committing an offence in a national criminal justice system.Methods: We conducted a nested case-control study using interlinked national Danish registers, identifying all adult suicides during 1981-2006.Exposure was defined according to all criminal charges since 1980, up to and including last judicial verdict before suicide.There were 27,219 suicides and living 524,899 controls matched on age, gender and date of death.Relative risk was estimated using exposure odds ratios generated by conditional logistic regression models, applying a generic reference group of people without any history of criminal justice system contact.Results: Over a third of all male suicides had a criminal justice system history, but relative risk against the general population was higher in women (OR 3.3, Cl 3.1-3.5) than in men (OR 2.3, Cl 2.2-2.4).Independent effects persisted with confounder adjustment.Risk was higher than expected even in people with some criminal justice system contact but without custodial sentences or guilty verdicts.It was especially high with recent or frequent contact, with custodial sentencing and with violent offending.We could not examine risk in women charged with sexual offences as there were too few exposed cases, but in men the relative risk in this group was somewhat lower than among those with violent offences and was equal to that seen with property offending.Risk increased with rising levels of violence, with the highest risks of all seen with homicide or attempted homicide: male OR 11.96, Cl 8.27-17.29; female OR 30.93, Cl 11.87-80.56.Conclusion: We examined a section of society in which major health and social problems frequently co-exist, including offending, psychopathology and suicidal behaviour.The need for developing more far-reaching national suicide prevention strategies is indicated, and improved mental health service provision is required for all people processed by the criminal justice system.Public services should be better coordinated to tackle co-occurring health and social problems more effectively.Further research is needed to uncover the complex mechanisms and pathways that explain the strong link between violent offending and elevated suicide risk.