Arizona Suicide Watches

Gaps in Arizona prison suicide watches

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

Since prison director Charles L. Ryan took over in February 2009, Arizona inmates have taken their own lives at a record pace with no change in the future horizons. Although it is claimed that the agency is doing a good job in suicide prevention methods, the realistic accounts of those experiencing suicide ideations and attempts have demonstrated just the opposite.

It has become appearant that suicide watches are not as effective as they could be as the agency continues to report suicide deaths with no additional preventive measures in place to reduce such incidents.

If one was to take an account of these suicides and look closer at the systems in place, they would find two common denominators. The first being the lack of mental health attention provided for stabilization and treatment and the second being poorly conducted suicide watches that do little to prevent deaths or self-harm efforts by incarcerated persons.

One solution is the resurrection of attitudes and practices that embrace stabilization and treatment by mental health providers.  It is suspected that more than half of the severely mentally ill persons incarcerated are not getting the proper screening by a registered nurse or mental health professional.
This is most disturbing for the public and families of incarcerated persons and should be addressed immediately as the Arizona Department of Corrections contracts out such critical services with Wexford which is responsible for properly documenting such actions related to potential suicidal inmates.

This often results in a disastrous situation and hopeless situation as the inmates will find a way to kill themselves and place heavy burdens on responding correctional officers to resuscitate or apply first aid to them under very stressful conditions that are rarely successful in preserving life.

This process of properly documenting suicidal inmates is influenced by a “deliberate indifference culture” that tolerates prison related deaths and mentally ill inmates killing themselves creating deliberate and avoidable gaps in their treatment and prevention procedures.

Rather than finding occasional lapses in their service, the cultural tone consistently creates huge gaps that are often filled too late to save a life at the time the inmate is left along long enough to commit suicide. One would think that this high number of suicides would give the administration a “red flag” suggesting they have a “ticking timebomb” on their hands and is in need of dire attention. Instead, it is business as usual and nothing is being done to reduce these mental health problems within our prisons.

The second denominator is the quality of these suicide watches inside our prisons. Placing inmates on a suicide watch is merely a gesture for taking action. The inmate does not receive any treatment while on a watch and is observed and kept in isolation for purposes that resemble and exacerbate their existing conditions by pushing them further beyond the edge of insanity but beyond those already experienced leaving nothing but doom and darkness to cope with during that time.
Back in 2009, Charles L Ryan terminated a suicide awareness aide program that allowed inmates watching other inmates on suicide watches and reports to mental health their observations. It allowed a peer to peer relationship that was better than the inmate to staff relationship. 

No reason was given for such termination of the program and no mention of reviving this program has been announced.  This concept is evidence based effective and was instrumental in the past for saving lives.

Suicide watches are punitive in nature and treated accordingly. Staffs do not want to sit there and observe an inmate not worthy of staying alive as the culture has marginalized the value of inmates inside Arizona prisons.

This task is most resentful and boring and is often neglected by leaving the area where the inmate is housed and ignoring their duties to check on them every ten minutes, thirty minutes or constantly as the mental health assessment form dictates the watch to be conducted.

The majority of the times, inmates are stripped of their clothing, bedding and other personal items that can be used for self harm or hanging. They are often kept under such duress for more than three days and quite frequently more than ten days depending on their behavior while on the watch.

What is not documented is the constant egging and badgering that staff performs to provoke or create a hostile relationship between inmates and the officer assigned to watch them.

Rather than placing suicidal inmates in a therapeutic environment conducive to treatment and stabilizing them they are placed in areas isolated from general population but shared with other “crazies” around them or worst, behavioral misfits in their proximity that encourage destructive behaviors as they impose peer pressure to go through with the suicide and motivate to do something negatively to themselves.

Under these conditions, a suicide watch is most ineffective and serves no purpose what so ever except to punish the mentally ill person or suicidal inmate for taking their time away from doing another job and restricted to movement and creating attitudes with staff that see no value in such a service.

They watch the inmate for 24 hours or more throughout their entire shifts and instead of making the climate more therapeutic in nature, they are subjecting the inmate to more distress as they know that the officers do not want to be there watching them and taking it out on them.

It is likely Director Ryan will decline to comment or deny these conditions exist within his prisons. In the meantime, he has ordered a re-invented [designed] pseudo suicide prevention training program that has the same content extended for eight hours rather than the formerly three hours it was in the past. This has done more harm than good as staff becomes bored and frustrated with this repetitive and redundant training curriculum that does nothing to change the culture or value of inmate lives inside Arizona prisons.

Perhaps it is time for a legislative oversight committee or a human rights commission to visit this practice and recommend and implement new measures to reduce suicides inside Arizona prison and comply with sound correctional practices that are placed in the written guidelines of relevant policies but are circumvented and ignored in all practical aspects of the suicide watch creating serious gaps in the prevention and preservation of human life.

December 24, 2012