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Prisoner suicide is suicide by a person incarcerated in a jail or prison.
Suicide is and continues to be a leading cause of death in jails and in prisons worldwide, and suicide rates are typically more than 10 times higher in the female incarcerated population and twice as high in the male incarcerated population relative to the age-standardised general population in a given country.
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Prisoners who have recently received bad news from home or are demonstrating an inability to adapt to the institutional environment may also be at higher risk.
Prisoners with illnesses are at higher risk of suicide. Prisoners with AIDS have a suicide rate between 16 and 36 times higher than that of the general population.CORREIA, KEVIN M. Suicide Assessment in a Prison Environment A Proposed Protocol. Criminal justice and behavior. (10/2000), 27 (5), p. 581–99.
Objective tests such as the Beck Depression Inventory are of limited utility because a malingerer may fake signs of being suicidal, while a prisoner who does not want to be stopped from committing suicide may hide signs of being suicidal.
A study in New York found that 41% of prison suicides involved inmates who had recently received mental health services, although only one-third of prison suicides are found to have a psychiatric history, as opposed to 80–90 percent of suicides in the general community. Pretrial detainees tend to have higher rates of suicide than other inmates, with about a third of all prison suicides occurring within the first week of custody. Custodial suicide is the leading cause of death among detainees housed in jails.O'Leary, William D. Custodial suicide: Evolving liability considerations. Psychiatric quarterly. (1989), 60 (1), p. 31 – 71
According to data by the Council of Europe, in the Balkans the suicide rate in prisons is lower than in the rest of Europe: between 2011 and 2015 there were on average 53 cases of suicide each year for every 100,000 prisoners in the Balkans, and 87 in the rest of Europe. This may be explained by the fact that in Balkan countries the incarceration rate is relatively high – so the prisons are not populated by people that are particularly vulnerable – and the use of preventive detention is rather low.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has criticised the fact that the rate of suicide in Norwegian prisons is one of the highest in Europe.
Mere negligence is not enough for there to be a constitutional violation. The federal courts seldom allow recovery based on section 1983 absent extreme instances of deliberate indifference to a suicidal prisoner or a clear pattern of general indifference to suicidal inmates. There has to have been a strong likelihood rather than a mere possibility that a suicide would occur. Courts have also found that there is no duty to screen every prisoner for suicide potential, unless it is obvious that an inmate has such tendencies or propensities. Further, even if prison officials are aware of the inmate's suicidal tendencies and he does commit suicide, they are not liable if they took reasonable actions to prevent the suicide. In determining deliberate indifference, the practical limitations on jailers in preventing inmate suicides must be taken into account.
Examples of failures that can give rise to claims related to suicide in correctional settings include inadequate mental health and psychiatric examination,; failure to consider obvious and substantial risk factors in assessing potential for suicide, failure to place an inmate on suicide precautions upon recognizing the obvious and substantial risk, failure to communicate the action taken to other providers Woodward v. Myres (2000) or to custody and jail staff, failure to adequately monitor an inmate on suicide watch and maintain an appropriate observation log, discontinuation of suicide watch despite prior knowledge of suicidal behavior of the inmate and potential continued risk, failure to follow policies and procedures related to suicide risk assessment, intervention, and prevention, failure to provide training to correctional staff, abrupt discontinuation of psychotropics in an inmate who is known to have made a serious suicide attempt in the recent past, and grossly inadequate treatment by professional standards or the lack of treatment plans, policies, procedures, or staff, creating a grossly inadequate mental health care system, and repeated examples of delayed or denied medical treatment.
One criticism of the current case law is that prison officials are incentivized to avoid screening inmates for suicidal tendencies, because if the screening is ineffective, or the jail fails to deter the suicidal attempt of a prisoner it knows is suicidal, the governmental entity and the jailer may be at greater risk of being held liable than if they had conducted no screening. Nonetheless, some jails screen anyway, since jail suicides are difficult on staff and on the municipality and often lead to legal action, and because some states mandate screening procedures and impose Tort for failure to follow them. Elected officials may face political ramifications if they become the scapegoat for a prisoner suicide.Franks, George J The conundrum of federal jail suicide case law under section 1983 and its double bind for jail administrators.. Law & psychology review. (22 March 1993), 17 p. 117 – 133
Another factor that has led to more screening of inmates for suicide is that research has shown that suicide tends to be the result of a plan rather than impulsive, which makes the suicide potentially more foreseeable if proper screening is done.Smith, April R. Revisiting impulsivity in suicide: Implications for civil liability of third parties. Behavioral sciences & the law. (11/2008), 26 (6), p. 779 – 797.
Liability
In the United States, liability can arise under and the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution if jail and prison officials demonstrate deliberate indifference toward a prisoner's suicidal tendencies, as suicidal inmates are regarded as being in need of medical care. In Farmer v. Brennan, deliberate indifference was established as a standard between negligence and acting with purpose or intent, thus amounting basically to recklessness. The Farmer decision has created difficulties for plaintiffs in proving suicide liability as a violation of constitutionally established civil rights.Hanser, Robert D. Inmate Suicide in Prisons: An Analysis of Legal Liability under 42 USC Section 1983. The Prison journal (Philadelphia, Pa.). (12/2002), 82 (4), p. 459 – 477 The burden of proof appears to be higher than in malpractice cases.Daniel, Anasseril E. Suicide-Related Litigation in Jails and Prisons: Risk Management Strategies. Journal of correctional health care. (01/2009), 15 (1), p. 19 – 27. Case law provides that liability only exists if prison officials had subjective knowledge of (or at least willful blindness to) an inmate's serious medical need. I.e., they cannot be held liable if they merely should have known, but did not actually know.http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1258
See also
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