"Ohio prison suicides not limited to mentally ill," is by Andrew Welsh-Huggins and Julie Carr Smyth of Associated Press, via the Columbus Dispatch.
Suicides by Ohio inmates often involve prisoners who have committed violent crimes, are not limited to those in prison mental-health units and tend to happen either early in an inmate’s sentence or after a decade or more of serving time, according to a report released yesterday.
Suicides generally occur in either high-security prisons or reception facilities where inmates first enter the system, and almost always involve men and most often white men, according to the report by the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee.
The study said 88 Ohio inmates have killed themselves since 2000, a rate lower than the national average.
Prison suicides are being scrutinized in Ohio since the Sept. 3 suicide of Cleveland kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro and the Aug. 4 suicide of Death Row inmate Billy Slagle.
Internal prison reviews of those deaths are underway, including the circumstances surrounding the suicides and, in Castro’s case, whether he received adequate medical and mental-health treatment. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction also has hired two experts on prison conditions and suicides to review all suicides going back two years.
The Ohio Correctional Institution Inspection Committee report is available in Adobe .pdf format.
Last week, Dispatch reporter Alan Johnson wrote, "Inmate-suicide expert will examine Ohio prisons."
Ohio is hiring a leading national expert on inmate suicides in the wake of two high-profile suicide cases.
Dr. Lindsay M. Hayes, project director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Mansfield, Mass., will be paid $13,125 to examine inmate mental-health assessments and other protocols and procedures, said Gary Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Hayes’ rate is $168.75 per hour, plus travel expenses.
Mohr said Hayes will team with Fred Cohen, a law professor who is now a health-care consultant to state prisons and previously served as the federal court-appointed monitor in the settlement of a lawsuit challenging inmate medical care.
Mohr said he decided to bring in Hayes and Cohen in light of concerns because of two recent suicides — Death Row prisoner Billy Slagle on Aug. 4 and Ariel Castro on Sept. 3. Slagle was just three days away from his execution date, while Castro had served a single month of his life sentence for kidnapping three Cleveland women and holding them hostage in his home for nearly a decade.
“I care about everyone we have responsibility for, no matter what they’ve done,” Mohr said.
Hayes and Cohen will be in Ohio next month and will submit a report to Mohr by Nov. 15.
And:
An investigative report released Monday indicated that Clay Putnam, 19, a probationary officer on duty on Death Row the night of Slagle’s suicide, did not make his required rounds and falsified an electronic log to indicate he did.
Castro’s suicide remains under investigation. Two corrections officers were suspended in that case as well.
Earlier coverage from Ohio begins with the preceding post.
Comments