How to Lower the High Level of Jail Suicides

Date:  08-19-2022 Until we sustainably invest in public health and health care both in and out of jail, preventable deaths will continue

From Brennan Center for Justice: Jail suicides have been an over­looked national crisis for years. Amer­ica needs to start learn­ing from them in order to address the under­ly­ing prob­lems that are caus­ing so much need­less death. Twenty-five-year-old Dashawn Carter commit­ted suicide imme­di­ately after being trans­ferred back to New York City’s Rikers Island jail from a psychi­at­ric hospital. He had been placed in a general popu­la­tion hous­ing unit despite a long history of mental illness. Rising jail deaths under egre­gious condi­tions have spurred the New York Times to launch an inde­pend­ent data­base track­ing these ongo­ing losses. Across the coun­try in a San Diego jail, a similar story played out. Thirty-five-year-old Lester Marroquin drowned himself after being moved out of a “safety cell” — where he had been checked on every 15 minutes — despite a known history of suicide attempts. These unne­ces­sary losses of life are troub­ling but not rare. Accord­ing to the latest Bureau of Justice Stat­ist­ics report, suicides were the lead­ing cause of jail deaths between 2000 and 2019, total­ing 6,217 — 30 percent of all deaths in local jails. In 2019, the suicide rate in jails was over two times that of the general public. Continue reading