The guardian (17 octobre 2014) Inmate suicide figures expose human toll of prison crisis
- Data obtained by Guardian reveals more than six prison suicides a month
- Stories behind statistics show young men and mentally ill at high risk
- Officials blame budget cuts for inadequate staff numbers and lack of training
The human toll of the crisis gripping prisons in England and Wales is exposed with new figures obtained by the Guardian revealing that 125 prisoners have killed themselves in 20 months – an average of more than six a month.
For the first time the Guardian has identified the individuals behind the statistics that show suicide is at its highest rate in prisons for nine years, and there is no sign that the scale of the tragedy is being checked.
The investigation, which examined all suicides between January 2013 and 28 August 2014, found four women and 121 men, aged between 18 and 74, killed themselves in the adult prison system.
Since then and up to 2 October another nine men, aged between 21 and 46, killed themselves, bringing the total number of self-inflicted deaths since January 2013 to 134. Three people killed themselves on one day, 1 September 2014.
The Prison Service ombudsman, Nigel Newcomen, described the deaths as “utterly unacceptable” in a modern age and said they reflected the “rising tide of despair” across the prison system. He said his recommendations to save future lives were being ignored.
“There is no question the Prison Service is more challenged now than [it has been] in a generation,” Newcomen said. “My job is to draw lessons from these individual human tragedies and I don’t think that adequate heed has been taken of them.”
He said the “appalling upsurge in suicides” meant there was a need to review the approach within prisons, including “more resources being applied”.
The Guardian looked at every case of suicide in the prison system over the 20-month period. Included among them
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