How difficult is it to kill yourself in prison?

Factual Questions
1

It’s not uncommon to hear of inmates killing themselves in prison for various reasons. I was thinking about the logistics, and it seems to me that it would be difficult to do.

First of all, what is the most commonly used technique? I’m assuming hanging yourself with a sheet is most popular.

It seems to me that most of the people hanging themselves have presumably never hung anyone before. Is it easy to end your life this way? I thought of a few potential problems:

  1. Wouldn’t it be difficult to tie a noose with a sheet? I don’t even know how to tie a noose in the first place, although I’m sure I could come up with some sort of knot that would work.

  2. Wouldn’t your natural instinct to survive keep you from suffocating? If you are hung at the gallows, your hands are tied and you are dropped a few feet to break your neck. If you are hanging yourself with a sheet, wouldn’t your survival instinct cause you to reach up and grab the sheet above the noose and try to work it free? I suppose you could just wait until you passed out.

  3. What if there is nothing on the ceiling in your cell to hang from?

  4. Are there any other commonly used suicide techniques in prison?

2

Most suspension points in prisons have been removed, making traditional hanging difficult. I believe that most deaths by ‘hanging’ are in fact slow strangulation- tying a sheet or other ligature around the neck- often from a door handle or other low suspension point and then letting one’s body weight gradually constrict the flow of blood to the brain until unconsciousness and death follow.

3

I’m sure our prison doctor will be along to share his experiences, but I would think it would be very easy to open a vein, overdose on drugs, or piss of the wrong guy and get beaten to death. Prison is not void of contraband, much as they’d like it to be.

4

IANA Mod but…

Do not ask for advice on suicide. If someone asks, do not answer.

5

I presume that you could always go up to the guy named Tiny and say insulting things about his mother. That might get you killed pretty quickly.

However, he might just decide to make you his girlfriend instead.

6

That makes sense . . . I guess a person in that situation would have the proper “motivation” to see it through and simply not allow himself to interfere with his own strangulation.

7

There was the old playing cards method.

8

What Pjen said. We see far more gestures and attempts than successful suicides, fortunately. One needs to be very motivated to carry out the act, given the reduced opportunities. Staff is pretty motivated to prevent suicides, it shakes up the entire population, not just the inmates. We’ve got in-house lectures again next week on suicide prevention.

9

You have to also realise that a significant number of suicides, especially cutting up, are actually not genuine suicide attempts at all, but end up with death as the undesired result.

It is not at all unusual for a prisoner to cut themselves, or use the alarm call prior to suspending themselves, expecting a prompt attendance from staff and thus a rescue, unfortunately in the case of suspension, it takes a frighteningly short time to become unconscious and death may result, even if unintentional, if attendance to cell alamr is delayed for any of the million and one reasons that divert staff attention then this may the the result.

Other suicide attempts are more self harm, some prisoners feel a sense of relief when they see their own blood being let.

One case I can think of in particular, the prisoner was refferred to psychologists to address his self harm, and treatment was succesful in that the subject finally understood why he was injuring himself.
This treatment was successful, except that now he understood why he self harmed, he no longer had that avenue of relief from the pressures in his head.
He committed suicide, and it was intentional given the preparations he had made such as ensuring the cell door could not be opened quickly, note etc.

One aspect of prison suicide may seem surprising to prison outsiders, a succesful suicide attempt often leads to more copycat attempts, and without a great deal of vigilance a prison can acquire a bad reputation as a suicide jail, its almost then becomes endemic.

When people are incarcerated, problems that are minor annoyances outside, can become overwhelmingly magnified, partly because the prisoner may well not have any means to arrive at a solution, they simply get stuck in their minds with a situation and just cannot move on past it - for example one inmate recently was upset that his kit issue did not include a t-shirt that fitted him, unfortunately the clothing store was closed at the time - it being a weekend - and when a member of staff told the prisoner this, it escalated into raised voices, other prisoners joined in and suddenly we had a very dangerous situation, we very nearly lost the entire wing, all over a damned t-shirt, and was all just because the inmate couldn’t move his mind on 24 hours until Monday when he could get to the clothing store.

Its this sort of distorted reality that can lead to prisoners self-harming and committing suicide, and its a subject we have to try to be open with prisoners about, and the worry is always that mere talking about the subject may put ideas into places where they were not.

I can think of some very horrible ways that have been used for suicide, I don’t thiknk its wise to discuss them here, there is an odd sort of machismo in the minds of a few tortured souls.

10

Drugs are fairly commonly available in prisons.

It would probably not be that hard to deliberately overdose yourself.

11

Drugs are fairly commonly available in prisons.

It would probably not be that hard to deliberately overdose yourself.

12

Try seeing it from the inmates perspective. The only clothes that you have don’t fit and no body can be arsed to try to put it right. Regulations must be followed; procedures are all that is important. Prison owes at least minuimum standards to its inmates- clothes that fit being a minimum that should not have been breached.

If the prison had either not made the mistake in the first place, or attempted to overcome it rather than saying that the store was not open until the Monday, then maybe you would not have been at risk of ‘losing the wing’. Of course, if there had been a riot, the blame would have been on the ‘unreasonable’ prsioner, rather than on the ‘unreasonable’ system.

13

I did a google search . . . found a pretty interesting study comparing suicide techniques in different types of facilities. Looks like the overwhelming majority hang themselves (94%) and bedding was used in about 50% of those hangings. Other items used included shoelaces and belts. Of the 339 prison suicides surveyed, 4 cut themselves, 4 overdosed, and 4 somehow shot themselves. Two managed to jump off of something, one swallowed a foreign object, and 7 did “other.”

Link

Another link offered the following stats regarding hangings: “the main ligature points were window bars (48 percent); cell fittings such as lights, pipes, cupboards, sinks, toilets or doors (18 percent); or a bed (11 percent).”

Link

14

You keep saying that! :wink:

Drugs are available, but usually not in quantities needed to ensure death. At least in my prison system.

15

But what’s acceptable to a reasonable person, and what’s acceptable to an incarcerated person can be quite different things.

I’ve seen fits of rage and acting out over being given an ace elastic wrap for an ankle rather than an ankle sleeve. The former was adequate and available. The latter was unnecessary and unavailable to boot. But the guy ended up causing such a disturbance over it that he was put in segregation.

Or the guy who says he’s allergic to peanut oil so demands a separate diet without it, and goes berserk if his tray even touches another tray with a normal diet on it. despite the fact that he eats Snickers bars from canteen all the time.

Our institution does a pretty good job on providing the necessities. However, many of the inmates have expectations that are not going to be met.

16

To play devils advocate for a minute (or is that you in this case, I’m not really sure). Look at it from the prisons POV. They gave him the wrong size shirt (maybe it wasn’t a mistake, maybe it was the only size in stock at that time), there’s nothing that can be done until Monday when the can get the correct size. Period. Nothing can be done until Monday. What’s a prison gaurd/warden/doctor supposed to do when someone just can’t just can’t understand that.

17

I recently heard about an inmate committing suicide by inhaling a boiled egg and suffocating himself. Snopes has nothing on it. If this actually happened, he was not only extremely determined but also very creative. I would have never thought of suffocating myself with a peeled boiled egg.

18

The mention of the survival instinct made me remember a movie, title of which I totally forget. An inmate commits suicide by climbing into the upper bunk, tying his hands together and stepping over the knot so that he is now restrained from the rear. He then proceeds to tip forward off the bunk, head first. Broken neck or skull results.

19

Whoa . . . that’s insane!

20

This will probably be the post that gets this thread closed, but suicide is not that difficult if you’re really determined. As noted, the most common method is self-strangulation - you just tie a piece of cloth around your neck in a position where gravity will keep from breathing once you lose consciousness. Overdosing on pills, taking poison, and “cutting up” all take more effort in terms of getting the needed supplies and all are less reliable if you really want to kill yourself.

We will rather agressively prevent any inmate from killing or injuring himself. We put any inmate suspected of considering suicide in a strip cell with the lights on and a guard watching him twenty four hours a day. If necessary we will even tie an inmate down to the bed or heavily sedate him to prevent him from injuring himself (I’ve seen inmates try to hurt themselves by jumping headfirst off a toilet or by chewing at their own wrists).