Prison staff missing vital clues about prisoner suicide risk, says Ombudsman

Staff in prisons need to get better at spotting and using essential information about the risk of suicide among prisoners, said Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) Nigel Newcomen. Today, he published a bulletin on the lessons that can be learned from investigations into the self-inflicted deaths of prisoners within the first month of custody.

“Learning Lessons Bulletin: Fatal incidents investigations issue 10 – early days and weeks in custody” follows up a PPO review of self-inflicted deaths of prisoners in 2013/14 which found that a significant number of deaths occurred in the first month in prison. In a sample of 132 PPO investigations into self-inflicted deaths in prisons from April 2012 to March 2014, nearly a third of the deaths (40) occurred in the first 30 days and, of these, half died within the first week in prison. The most common theme arising from these investigations was the failure of staff to identify or act on information about factors known to increase prisoners’ risk of suicide or self-harm. This issue was also highlighted in a PPO thematic report about risk factors in 2014.

Download “Learning Lessons Bulletin: Fatal incidents investigations issue 10 – early days and weeks in custody”.

You can also view the complete news release here.