Pubdate: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 Source: Independent (UK) Copyright: 2002 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. Contact: http://www.independent.co.uk/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209 Author: Ian Burrell Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) THE HARSH TOLL THAT LIFE INSIDE TAKES ON THE VULNERABLE They have tried offering them painting and drama therapy. They have tried giving them comfortable rooms with a television and armchairs. And they have even been treated to a soothing music and light show. But still, every few days or so, somewhere inside the overcrowded and intensely monitored environment that is the prison system, someone will manage to find enough time and space to take their own life. Some do it in a fit of remorse because they have just killed or seriously injured the one they most love and cannot comprehend what they have done. Some, like the serial killer Fred West, know precisely what they have done and the fate that awaits them; they choose death rather than spending the rest of their lives in a maximum-security prison. But mostly they do it because they are the young, vulnerable and distressed, and plunged into a claustrophobic hierarchy of bullying and favours, "old lags'', "nonces" and prison officers barking orders from which there is no relief other than the ripped sheet around the cell bars. Frances Crook, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "We are literally sending our children into prison to die." For many years, the prison service has been trying, and largely failing, to reduce the numbers of inmates who commit suicide. Various therapies to ease distressed people have included putting them in rooms filled with soothing music where kaleidoscopic colours are projected onto walls and bounced off a disco-style glitter ball hanging from the ceiling. Suicidal prisoners were once dumped into spartan "strip" cells, but those have now been phased out in favour of "safe" cells. These are specially designed with furniture made from cardboard and without any points " such as window bars, taps or pipes " from which a prisoner can attach a home-made ligature. Once, prisoners were put on 15-minute or hourly watch by prison officers. Now, in theory, they should be monitored by closed-circuit television cameras. The latest idea is to shock prisoners "many of whom are using suicide attempts as a cry for help " by telling them that, actually, it is quite easy to kill yourself. The campaign is needed because the toll of suicides is rising again and at a higher level than the prison population: 89 so far this year, compared with 78 last year and 72 in 2000. About half of this year's cases were aged under 30, and 12 of those were under 20. Hanging is overwhelmingly the preferred method. In an interview with The Independent, the Prison Service's director general, Martin Narey, said the escalating toll caused him distress. "I get paged day or night when there's a suicide," he said. "It's happened 89 times this year and it's very depressing." When Mr Narey took up his post in 1999, he voiced concern that the suicide rate had doubled in 15 years from 62 to 125 per 100,000 inmates. He said that reducing the rate of deaths was his "number-one priority". But the rate this year is at its highest ever, at 130 per 100,000, and it is considered a real possibility that more than 100 prisoners will kill themselves in one year for the first time. Many inquests into such prison tragedies record verdicts of "accidental death". Mr Narey is certain many are cries for help that go wrong. "Most of us believe that putting something around a hand-basin or something from a bottom bunk, inches above floor level, would not lead us to lose control. It patently does," he said. "All the evidence shows that particularly young people have no idea how easy it is to kill themselves, particularly by hanging. The reality is that it's frighteningly easy for someone to succeed in hanging themselves." The difficulty for prison staff in preventing such tragedies is in identifying the inmates who are most vulnerable. Critics say they are often inadequately trained for the task. But with the prison population at a record 73,000, and admissions to some prisons up by 25 per cent, the throughput of new prisoners is such that staff increasingly fail to pick out individuals that are at risk. At least 5,000 prisoners have some kind of mental problems. Mr Narey said judges and magistrates also had to understand that in sentencing so many people to jail they were sending some to their deaths: "We need sentencers to listen to the sentencing message from the Home Secretary and the Lord Chief [Justice], because I believe that if we had a few thousand fewer people in custody we would get on top of this again and the numbers would go on a downward path," he said. Research on this year's fatalities has shown that most of those who die have been in prison for less than a month. Almost half of the suicides are among those on remand and two-thirds take place in "local'' prisons, which cater for those awaiting trial and short sentences. The issue is complicated, however, by the fact that many of those who hang themselves have been in prison before. "It's as if they come back in prison for the sixth or seventh time and think, is this all life has for me, and take their own lives then," Mr Narey said. "They appear to us to be very able to survive custody, have done perfectly well before and appear to be no risk whatsoever." The rate compares unfavourably with prisons even in the United States, where well under 100 per 100,000 take their own lives. Mr Narey claimed this was a consequence of refusing to leave vulnerable prisoners in bare "strip cells" without clothes or furniture. He said that the reinstatement of such degrading conditions would only lead to more suicides when prisoners were released back into society. "A lot of parents ask why we haven't taken shoelaces from their children," he said. "The reason is that we are trying to treat people with dignity and support them discreetly." Ms Crook is convinced the poster campaign will not work. "Mostly these are young people and we need to sit down and talk to them," she said. She is also cynical about "safe" cells " "you can't design out misery" " and critical of the system for failing to communicate among its component parts, as in the case of Kevin Jacobs. Last week the Howard League won a significant victory in a High Court ruling that said local authorities had a statutory duty to safeguard the welfare of children in prison. "They shouldn't be there in the first place, but if they are, then the social services departments have to be more proactive in looking after them,'' Ms Crook said. But, ultimately, she agrees with Mr Narey that the real way of reducing suicides requires more fundamental reform to reduce the numbers in prison, particularly of the vulnerable. "When they are there, there simply aren't enough staff to look after them because of overcrowding," she said. "But really, most of these people " and many are children " should not be in prison and the courts and the penal system should do more to keep them out and care for them somewhere more suitable.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Derek