Introduction

Prison suicide is a global problem. Suicide is ‘often the single most common cause of death in correctional settings’ (World Health Organization (WHO), 2007: 1). National rates of prisoner suicide are consistently several times higher than rates in the general population (Fazel et al, 2017). Imprisonment is recognised as a stressor that can trigger suicidal behaviour (Larney and Farrell, 2017) and even induce psychological disturbance amongst prisoners with no prior disorder (Liebling, 2007: 433). Given that there are now 10.35 million people in prison globally (Coyle et al, 2016), this is worrying. ‘The need to monitor what goes on in prisons is more important and urgent than ever’ (Seddon, 2010: 278), not least because all those in a malfunctioning system kick downwards, so the detainee suffers most (Carver and Handley, 2016: 633).

Prisons, along with closed institutions of all kinds, pose accountability challenges for democratic societies (Harding, 2007). Suicides in closed penal institutions with coercive powers over detainees leave prisons open to legal challenges and threaten the right to life, which is ‘the most fundamental of all human rights, the basic pre-condition of the enjoyment of other rights’ (Owen and Macdonald, 2015: 121). Suicides often affect fellow prisoners and custodial staff (Sweeney et al, 2018) and may be particularly traumatic bereavements for prisoners’ families and friends because of the exceptional and often controversial circumstances (Liebling, 2007). Prison suicides are also economically problematic, draining England and Wales’ public purse of up to ￡385 million in 2016. However, the stark reality is that ‘many (suicides) could have been prevented if risks had been properly recognised and addressed’ (Owen and Macdonald, 2015: 309). Prison suicide is thus a substantially (although not entirely) preventable crisis with significant human and economic impacts. Between April 2012 and March 2013, prisoners in England and Wales were more likely to take their own lives than construction employees were to be killed at work (Doyle and McGrath, 2016: 159). Nevertheless, ‘dying in jail, which … occurs with admitted regularity, has been largely overlooked by social scientists’ (Liebling, 1992: 23). The USA has very recently had growing interest, but ‘death in prison in the UK is presented to be a rare phenomenon, for those few who serve whole life tariffs and those who die unexpectedly/unpredictably during their term of imprisonment’ (Girling and Seal, 2016: 271).