Up until 2019, monitoring the people in the suicide watch cells at South Central Correctional Facility in Tennessee was a job for staff. This meant for each shift watching each prisoner under observation, an officer making somewhere around $20 per hour had to be pulled from their post elsewhere in the facility. So it saves quite a bit of money to decide that prisoners can do it for less than $1 an hour instead—especially these days, when there are usually about five times as many people on suicide watch as there were back then.

I was in South Central’s inaugural class of “inmate observers.” We were told that the federal Bureau of Prisons had already been doing this for years, but that Tennessee would be among the first state prison systems to try it. There were 20 of us at first, enough to monitor three people. South Central usually only had one or two people on suicide watch at a time, so it seemed like we would be enough. 

My job involved sitting in a chair outside one of the four suicide watch cells and looking inside through a large window in the electronically operated door. From the chair we were required to make an entry in our log book every 15 minutes. For example:

9:00 am—Inmate sleeping, breathing
9:15 am—Inmate sitting up, later back down
9:30 am—Inmate walked around room

The situations that require informing staff are when the person under observation makes requests for items, like toilet paper, or engages in self-harm.

In 2019 the job paid $0.84 per hour, and today pays $0.94 per hour. That’s around double that of most jobs here, other than the jobs in the correctional industries program. But at first the observer slots were hard to fill. It seemed weird for prisoners to be given responsibility over our peers. Staff said we’d be helping our fellow prisoners get home safely, and that we’d do the job more efficiently than they might.

Today, the job has changed quite a lot. South Central now has 54 observers. This is because it’s normal now to have at least eight people on suicide watch at a time, and often up to 14. Observers are supposed to work four-hour shifts, but the six observers reached by Filter said that with so many people to watch, they often have to work double shifts. It’s intense work, constantly watching what someone else is doing, and you’re not allowed to leave your chair until the next observer relieves you. So four hours is long enough already.

Medical staff are required to check on the suicide watch prisoners every 30 minutes. That simply means walking by and checking that each person on suicide watch has an observer outside the door. But this was easier when it was just the four suicide watch cells, which are on the other side of a secured door from the rest of the medical building. 

Those four cells are no longer enough, so makeshift ones are popping up anywhere there’s room. Some of these makeshift cells are in other parts of the prison outside the medical department. Observers told Filter it can be very difficult to concentrate in some of these areas. Especially for eight hours at a time. They also reported that medical staff rarely check in with them there.

Suicide observation here might cost well over $7,000 per day if officers still did the job, but under $320 per day to have prisoners do it. Though in recent years many officer duties have been delegated to prisoners, this may be the only instance of one being formally outsourced as an hourly paying job. The Tennessee Department of Correction did not respond to Filter’s request for comment.

From what staff members reached by Filter remember, there’s been little to no increase in the number of people at risk for suicide since 2019. Most of the people going on suicide watch are there because the protective custody (PC) cells are full. PC is for those who have people waiting to hurt them in general population, so they need to be housed somewhere physically separate.

The mental health policy states that suicide watch is not supposed to be used as a means of segregation or isolation. Officers asked by Filter about this policy were not familiar with it.

“I just do what’s necessary to keep the place running,” one said with a shrug.

Security staff mainly suggested sending violent prisoners to a different facility with the resources to handle them.

There are several reasons why there is so much more demand for PC, and thus suicide watch, than there used to be. Like in many prisons across the United States, understaffing that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed South Central to descend into out-of-control gang violence, which means more people need to be housed in PC. But there is no more room in PC, so those prisoners are being sent to suicide watch even though most have not tried to harm themselves.

The PC situation has also become worse because of changes to how the facility punishes violence. It used to be that when a prisoner stabbed someone, they would be taken to maximum security and we wouldn’t see them again for years. Now they might be released back onto the compound within a few days, or even the same day. 

In 2023, shortly after the arrival of new TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada, we learned that there would be no more “incentive transfers”—meaning no one’s request to be sent to a particular facility would be considered, whether it was to be closer to family or simply out of desperation to go somewhere less violent. Now you’re just stuck where you are, which is particularly hopeless for those who’d landed at South Central or one of the other facilities privately operated by CoreCivic. So for many people here, there is not much reason to change their behavior.

The situation has recently gotten worse as South Central has received more and more transfers from Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, the CoreCivic facility under investigation by the Department of Justice.

Prisoners do make better observers than staff.

In addition to federal BOP facilities, many county jails have long used incarcerated observers. More than a dozen state prison systems also have some version of “inmate observers” described in their policies, but that does not include those like TDOC whose policies do not appear to mention them.

Staff at the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, which also began to use observers in 2019, have said that this wasn’t intended to address understaffing but was particularly helpful because it freed up staff resources.

It did turn out to be true that prisoners at South Central make better observers than staff. One member of the mental health staff who began working here prior to 2019 told Filter that though they don’t have hard numbers, incidents of self-harm by those on suicide watch decreased after the job was handed to prisoners.

“Observers provide more consistent and considerate watch than officers,” they said. “And [are] quicker to bring problems to the attention of medical staff.”

Image (cropped) via Nebraska Unicameral Legislature

The post Prison Suicide Watch Was Once a Staff Job. “Inmate Observers” Are Cheaper. appeared first on Filter.

South Central has dozens of cells reserved for PC, which prisoners can request when someone in general population is after them and they need to be housed somewhere that’s physically separated. PC is mainly full of people who are fleeing drug debt or are otherwise being victimized by gang-affiliated prisoners who would harm them if they could reach them. In recent years, as South Central has descended into out-of-control gang violence, it’s become commonplace for people who request PC to be turned away. Sometimes they’re simply left to their fate, but sometimes staff tries to find other places to put them. So now there’s no more room in suicide watch, even for people who are suicidal.

Prisoners on suicide watch are supposed to be kept in one of four highly restricted, specially designed cells where they can be closely monitored by prisoners who are paid 85 cents an hour as trained observers. But because all the suicide watch cells are full, the overflow of prisoners has spilled into the medical examination rooms. Those rooms don’t even have doors that lock; they just shut. Every single exam room has been converted into a makeshift suicide watch cell by ripping out the tables, sinks and electrical outlets, and removing everything else that used to be in them like wastepaper baskets. So now there’s no longer anywhere to do our medical exams, except for the emergency room, which as one medical staff member noted, “needs to be reserved for actual emergencies.”

Even the medical waiting room has been converted into a suicide watch cell.

Even the medical waiting room has been converted into a suicide watch cell. That room does have an electrical door that locks, but it’s also directly visible from the pill line window. Every day when general-population prisoners line up to receive their medications, everybody can look straight into the room and see the person being kept there.

“Medical has become the dumping ground for security problems,” said one medical staff member.

Filter spoke to five staff members who work in medical and mental health, and all of them expressed enormous distress about the situation. The influx of people on suicide watch, most of whom they feel weren’t screened appropriately, has completely disrupted their ability to provide care for the rest of us.

Some of them resent that medical resources have been taken over because no one’s addressing the problems with gang violence, and they feel that security officers are taking advantage of the suicide watch program as a way to avoid paperwork. Before someone can go to PC, they have to wait in the segregation unit for 10 days while security conducts an investigation to determine whether the threats against them are legitimate and then submits a report about the findings. The minute someone goes on suicide watch, they’re no longer the security staff’s problem.

But for the most part, the medical and mental health staff recognize that the security officers are just doing their best and that the prisoners in fear for their lives have nowhere else to go. None of them sees any sign that administration is going to address the situation. One said that the medical staff feel as desperate as the prisoners.

“I don’t feel most days that I ‘do no harm,’” they said, pressing their hand over their heart. “That hurts me deeply.”

TDOC and CoreCivic did not respond to Filter‘s request for comment.

Holding cells down at intake also been converted into suicide watch cells.

There are three holding cells down at intake where new prisoners are processed into the facility. They have also been converted into suicide watch cells. These are the old-school kind with bars you can stick your arm through. The actual suicide watch cells have electronically operated doors with food flaps so that no contact can be made with the person inside.

South Central has a mental health pod with 128 beds. Often, when a bed opens up, staff will take someone off suicide watch and put them there, if they think the person should really have been in PC all along. So this also disrupts the mental health pod, which is supposed to be for people whose mental state is too precarious to expose them to general population.

This still isn’t enough room for all the people on suicide watch, so sometimes they’re housed in the segregation unit. This means that observers have to monitor the people on suicide watch over the commotion of everyone else screaming at each other or at them.

“Sometimes guys in segregation will yell out trying to annoy guys we are watching,” one observer told Filter. “Stuff like, Do it! Do it!”

Three people in custody who have been placed on suicide watch within the past six months told Filter that they weren’t suicidal. They were being victimized by gang-affiliated prisoners in their living unit. Each of them had tried requesting PC by reporting the assaults or extortion they’d already experienced. They’d been taken back to their assigned unit, two of them in handcuffs.

In all three cases, when they eventually ended up on suicide watch it was due to an officer “prompting” them to say they were thinking about harming themselves, which are the words that compel staff to place you on suicide watch. They understood that suicide watch was their best option, so they said what they needed to say.

Filter also spoke to four security officers, who described the situation similarly.

“I have told them, ‘There’s no cell available [but] if you feel like you could harm yourself, I can get you on suicide watch,’” one said. “I don’t know what to do when there’s no space to put someone who really needs PC.”

The observers noted that staff seem to do their best to put the people really at risk for suicide in the actual suicide watch cells, and put the “frequent fliers” who need PC in the makeshift spaces. But it’s difficult to assess people properly under these conditions. And of course, there are still only four cells intended for suicide watch. These days, on average there’s a suicide attempt that results in someone from general population being transported to an outside hospital at least twice a month.

Read Part 2 of this story here

Image (cropped) via Nebraska Unicameral Legislature

The post With Suicide Watch Full, Prisoners Now Kept in Makeshift Cells appeared first on Filter.

Asked if they ever think about suicide, prisoners sitting around a dayroom table at a medium-security facility in Georgia considered the answer fairly self-evident.

“Mostly just when I hear of another one happening.”

“I suppose everyone thinks about it.”

All of us are serving life sentences. Someone joked that personally, their window in which to contemplate suicide had closed, as by now they had “invested decades in outliving the thing.” But the reality is that, as state and federal prison sentences grow longer and longer, suicide becomes a larger presence in our daily lives as time goes on.

The heightened risk of suicide in jails is driven by the fact that detainees are in acute crisis, and that if you happen to be contemplating suicide then jail is an extremely conducive environment in which to do that. Shame, loss, uncertainty and physical isolation often exacerbate the effects of mental illness and/or chaotic substance use.

“[Some] observers assume that, while the risk of suicide looms large in jail among inmates facing the initial stages of confinement, such risk dissipates over time in prison as individuals become more comfortable or tolerant of their predicament and develop coping skills to effectively handle life behind bars,” the National Institute of Corrections wrote in a 1995 report on prison suicide. “This assumption, of course, has not been empirically studied [and] is far too simplistic … the precipitating factors in suicidal behavior among prison inmates are somewhat different and fester over time.”

Thirty years later, the prison suicide remains severely underresearched. Most states provide either incomplete data on prison suicides or no data at all. But we do know that while most jail suicides happen shortly after arrival, and many suicides in prison happen during the first year of someone’s sentence, the majority of prison suicides happen later on.

Suicide risk is higher among people serving long mandatory minimum sentences, and those with life sentences as their maximum. Research has suggested that people serving life sentences have a very high likelihood of multiple suicide attempts.

“It is escape from their personally unendurable environment that allows no recapture, [and the] strongest statement the incarcerated human being could make in protest of their living condition,” Colo*, 14 years into a life sentence, told Filter. “In prison the living condition is the state’s to set. That human beings find it intolerable [to the point of suicide] even once is inexcusable.”

As the years deepen, many prisoners come to view suicide not only as a means of becoming free, but as an act of resistance.

Slavery is not a condition that becomes tolerable with time. Over the three decades and change I’ve spent in Georgia prisons, I’ve seen time and again that as the years of someone’s captivity deepen, they often come to view suicide not only as a means of becoming free, but specifically as an act of resistance against the state by denying further opportunities for indignity and torment.

Researchers have often pointed out that, given that the nature of prison is 24/7 surveillance and zero autonomy, none of us should even be able to die by suicide in the first place. Yet the understaffing crisis means not only that no one is around to provide mental health care, no one’s watching even the suicide observation rooms like they’re supposed to. We issue calls for transparency around deaths-in-custody data, and then we allow prisons to simply continue ignoring them.

Bo*, more than 40 years into a life sentence, noted how prominent a theme suicide is in Russian literature set in Soviet labor camps.

“In the 1950s Gulag, the zek [prisoners] knew they faced years of toil and misery followed by banishment far from home—if they lived,” Bo told Filter. “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago of hearing in the dark the sound of stools falling over as another zek hung himself from the rafters. It is telling that 75 years later the subject of prison suicide is still relevant.”

*Names have been changed

Image via Washington State Department of Corrections

The post As Years in Prison Become Decades, Lifers’ Thoughts on Suicide Evolve appeared first on Filter.

Tucked into my father’s wallet was small, crinkled piece of paper bearing the scribbled words: I’m sorry. He’d had it since he was 9, the day he came home from school and found it in my grandfather’s bedroom, along with my grandfather’s hanging body. He carried it with him ever since.

I knew my dad as a happy person. His smile and laugh were infectious. People gravitated toward him when he entered a room. But sometimes, out of nowhere, I’d find him quietly crying out in the barn. He’d always try to hide or excuse it, and then change the subject. This was back in the ’60s and ’70s, when men did not discuss their feelings.

In the ’90s I would enter the Tennessee men’s prison system, where to this day it can be actually dangerous to discuss your feelings. One day in 2001, I was called into the visit room where I found my dad sitting alone. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and then his tone became serious. He began recounting the times, all those decades ago, I’d found him weeping in the barn.

He said that he wished he’d talked to me, to someone, back then about what he was feeling. He wanted to talk to me about it now. He pulled out his wallet—visit room security wasn’t quite so restrictive back then—and laid the tattered note on the table. He told me that every time I’d found him crying in the barn, he’d gone there intending to kill himself.

He told me that the reason he never acted on those intentions was that he always remembered his 9-year-old self discovering his father hanging dead, and grabbing his feet trying to hold him up. He didn’t want to be the reason any of us felt that way. He was worried that now, with a life sentence ahead of me, I might be struggling with some of those thoughts myself.

In the field of suicide research, two risk factors go together: thwarted belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness.

In the field of suicide research, there’s a pair of risk factors that go together: thwarted belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness. The first describes the psychic pain of being somehow unable to participate in society, or when the basic need for human connection is unmet. The second describes a cognitive distortion wherein someone believes that others may be better served by their death than their life. Unsurprisingly, many people in prison struggle with both these risk factors. Research suggests this is especially true of lifers.

There’s a common misconception that suicide is inherently selfish; that people who “choose the easy way out” aren’t thinking of their loved ones. In reality, people who die by suicide are more likely compelled by the same thing that kept my dad from suicide—perceived burdensomeness. Just manifested in a different way.

When my dad opened up to me that day I was flabbergasted. I knew him not only as a man who laughed and sang, but as a man who was deeply religious. Walking back to my cell after the visit, I thought about my grandfather, whom I’d obviously never met. I thought back to the times in my life marked by depression and hopelessness. Suicide is so much closer to us in daily life in prison than in the free world, yet so easily takes us by surprise because no one ever talks about it.

My first week inside, I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to use the toilet when I saw a body hanging from a vent in the cell across from mine. I woke my cellie, who’d been in prison longer than a week and who told me to go back to sleep. I tried. I kept thinking about what I’d seen. And mostly I was thinking, That person doesn’t have to wake up in the morning and be in prison; they’re free now.

The group helped Zac put words on his emotions.

In the years after that visit from my dad, I began broaching the subject of depression in conversations with friends. More recently, I even organized a couple of workshops about depression. Asking a bunch of men in prison to talk about their feelings is not easy to do safely, let alone productively. But living in such a toxic environment makes the feeling of being in a safe space quite compelling, once people start to get comfortable.

Zac, for example, was initially reluctant to say much to the workshop group. He feels a lot of shame over his recurring bouts of depression, because it’s an “unmanly” thing to be dealing with. So he’d found himself in a pattern of trying to ignore it and just carry on with his life, and then not wanting to live anymore. 

“When people brought me around and I realized I was alive, I felt like a miserable failure,” Zac told Filter. “And embarrassed.”

Each time Zac came back from the emergency department, he was placed on suicide observation for a week. Suicide observation cells are, by design, cold and miserable places. Zac just kept answering “No” so that he could leave.

“Not one staff person asked me about my mental health or what I was feeling,” he said. “They just wanted to know if I was currently thinking about killing myself.”

The group helped him put words on his emotions. This, in turn, prompted several other participants to talk about some of their own experiences with depression and suicidal ideation. Which prompted me to talk about the note in my dad’s wallet.

Everyone in the group took out a piece of paper, and wrote down a few words to carry around in our pockets. Whenever depression started closing in around us, those words would remind us that it has helped in the past to talk to people, and that those people are here to talk again. That there was light, in addition to darkness. The piece of paper I folded up and put in my pocket had just one word: Hope.

The key, at least for myself and many people I’ve shared these spaces with, seems to be getting those first few words out: “I’ve been depressed”; “I’m struggling”; “I need to talk to someone.” Once we put words on the problem and say them to someone out loud, it’s like a dam breaks and the darkness we’d been holding inside of us starts to drain away.

Photograph via Minnesota Department of Correction

The post Learning to Live With Suicide in Prison appeared first on Filter.

If taking the suggestion to call the hotline at face value, the first issue would be that suicide deaths frequently occur in solitary confinement, where we have no access to prison phones.

The second would be that prisoners are already wary of voicing anything with the faint whiff of suicidal ideation to staff—are they going to be comfortable punching in their GDC identification number to describe those thoughts in detail on a recorded call? GDC did not respond to Filter’s request for comment about usage of facility phones to call the hotlines.

“Call the suicide hotline? [Getting shanked] is a better option.”

The phrase “Don’t be afraid to ask for help” is irritating in the free world, but especially vexing in here. 

“Call the suicide hotline?” Al*, who has spent most of his life incarcerated in GDC facilities, asked Filter. “What for? So I can lose my property and sit in a paper gown in the hole, freezing? Fuck that. [Getting shanked] is a better option than increasing the misery.”

Once someone’s demonstrated any behaviors that indicate risk of self-harm, per GDC policy they’ll be put on Suicide Precautions status and whisked off to solitary confinement for mental health observation. They will be observed shivering in a paper gown and eating “finger foods,” since they can’t be trusted to wear clothes and eat off a tray, until whenever GDC decides to return them to the same environment that prompted thoughts of suicide before. Hopefully they’re feeling better. 

“I do not want to talk to some far-away counselor about the shitty day I’m having,” Burt* told Filter. “I want to talk to relatives and friends, hear about normal lives. And make plans for returning home.” He, too, has spent most of his life in prison.

Talking to a loved one would do more to ease the suffering of many in here, but GDC makes it nearly impossible to do so. The suicide hotline number is toll-free—though you wouldn’t necessarily know that without reading the very last pages of our Inmate Handbook—but regular numbers sure aren’t.

In a prison system where the currency used in many facilities is Ramen soups (two soups = $1) the wall phones use USD. You need actual legal tender on your account to make calls at 13 cents per minute. But GDC pays us $0 for the jobs we go to each day, and prison phone operator Securus doesn’t accept soups. Even if you can afford the call, you might die waiting to get the number approved. 

A contraband cell phone, however, can be rented for an hour by anyone who can scrounge a couple of soups together. Even the poorest among us can often get a sympathy call home in exchange for making a bed.

So of course, as the suicide toll climbs higher and higher, GDC invests more and more into cell phone crackdowns. 

What does GDC expect us to live for?

“Yard call would be nice,” Al said. “You know we went a month and a half without yard call recently? I think I’ve been able to just go chill on the yard twice this year so far. It’s depressing. Walking to and from chow isn’t a substitute.”

Between 2015 and 2020, suicide accounted for nearly one in 10 deaths in GDC facilities. The exact number of suicide deaths inside state prisons each year is unknown. The Department of Justice used to publish annual in-custody death reports, but doesn’t anymore. Corrections departments are meant to report the data too, but rarely bother.

“I wake every morning and the first decision I make is: Will I kill myself today?” Al said. “I’m tired. I gave up on parole years ago. I don’t know what happened but no one in my situation is getting released anymore.” 

Al has the sort of disciplinary record the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles supposedly likes to see, has spent well over half his life inside GDC facilities, and by all accounts should have gone home a very long time ago. Like so many others who remain.

“I settled in hoping to live out my days as best I can,” Al said. “[But] there’s nothing left to hope for. One way or another, I will die soon.” 

Looking around, I see a prison full of old men. Many have served 20, 30, 40-plus years, each day fighting off the urge to end it all by holding on to the hope that one day they might go home, and it hasn’t gotten them anything but older.

*Names have been changed to protect sources.

Top image and inset image of contraband searches via Georgia Department of Corrections. Inset graphic of poster displayed inside GDC facility via Anonymous.

The post If Suicidal Prisoners Should “Ask for Help,” Stop Taking Away Our Phones appeared first on Filter.

Now imagine that instead of trying to comfort them, you’re supposed to watch from your chair on the other side of the window and take notes. Imagine watching this trauma go on for days or weeks, until you’re watching the moment when it all becomes more than they could bear. But you’re not allowed to intervene or even touch the door. All you do is flag down someone to go get a medical officer, and keep taking notes.

The full extent of suicide prevalence in United States prisons is unknown. But in many facilities, there are no preventative measures in place and no incentive for staff to go out of their way to help. There might be one mental health care worker for every 500 prisoners. But staff aren’t the ones monitoring the cells where prisoners are isolated while they’re considered high-risk for suicide; it’s other prisoners who do the hellish job.

At the facility where I’m incarcerated, suicide watch training was an eight-hour class where we learned how to fill out the paperwork and watched a documentary from the early 2000s about prisons in another state. Then we got a packet about all the things we’re not allowed to do.

“Inmate on watch is pacing around the cell … Inmate used the restroom …”

We’re not allowed to deliver messages to or from anyone on suicide watch. We’re not allowed to read to them. We’re not allowed to bring books down there at all. We’re not allowed to bring them anything, or anything for ourselves except for one meal’s worth of food for personal consumption. No music. We’re advised against extended conversations.

Every shift, we clock in and sit in a chair by the door of the cell to observe the person locked inside. Our job is to then document our observations at random intervals not to exceed 15 minutes. Inmate on watch is pacing around the cell … Inmate used the restroom … 

Twice a day an officer will bring a nearly expired ham sandwich and carrots too tough to chew, and push it through a window flap in the door. Nurses deliver medication the same way. We’re not allowed to talk to the nurses, even to ask for our own medication. We’re supposed to get our meds at pill line with everyone else, but we’re not supposed to leave our chairs. Each shift is five hours, but the number of people under observation means we often work double shifts.

In addition to documenting when the prisoner under observation stands up or sits down or takes a piss, we have to document anything in the cell that isn’t supposed to be there. Inmate is in possession of a blanket … Inmate is in possession of a pair of socks …

If they managed to get ahold of a pencil and paper so they can draw, and they hold up their artwork to the window to show us, we could lose our job if we don’t report it. Pencils and paper are contraband. 

So frequently is suicide watch utilized for reasons that have nothing to do with suicidal ideation that neither prisoners nor staff take it seriously.

This nightmare is worse to experience than words can convey. For five or 10 hours at a time, you watch a fellow prisoner in agony without lifting a finger to help them. That prisoner watches you watching them and labels you a traitor or a snitch, for collaborating with the medical officers to make their time there more miserable.

Most of the people on suicide watch are not there because of suicide and self-harm. Some people get taken there because they fought another prisoner. Some because they’ve done something to anger the chronically vindictive guards, such as asking a question at the wrong time. Others are there for no other reason than that they’re mentally ill and staff has given up on them.

People who attempt suicide in prison are often violently punished for it when staff take them to solitary. But I’d say about half the people who go on suicide watch “check in” voluntarily. Sometimes they’re trying to get moved to a different housing unit, but usually it’s because of unpaid drug debts. Like in many prisons, the suicide watch cells here are physically separate from the main living units, past a series of high-security doors leading to rooms that are nothing but concrete boxes with no insulation. 

The tragedy is that when someone really does try to harm themselves, it’s assumed they’re putting on a show to avoid someone coming to collect their drug debts. So frequently is suicide watch utilized for reasons that have nothing to do with suicidal ideation that neither prisoners nor staff take it seriously anymore. 

Suicide observation here pays 85 cents an hour—more than almost any other job on the compound.

Since most of the people on suicide watch are there for reasons unrelated to their mental health, most of them come back on the compound, and they come back understandably pissed off from the experience. Observers can be shunned or cut off from business relationships because of the stigma attached to the job. 

But suicide observation here pays 85 cents an hour—more than any other job on the compound except tutoring, which pays $1 an hour but has only four slots. Most jobs pay around 20 cents an hour. And you can still be assigned to another, regular job on top of suicide observation, because this is a voluntary role.

Prisoner suicide watch being delegated to prisoners isn’t new, but the job wasn’t always this hands-off. In a 1995 document on prisoner suicide prevention, the National Institute of Corrections noted that while the practice of using prisoner “companions” was ethically controversial due to poorly defined internal processes, most of them “were conscientious and did an excellent job.”

Since prisoner observers were in such close proximity to the prisoners being observed, the document stated, they were also “given basic training in understanding suicidal behavior, empathic listening and other techniques for building communication.” That way, they had “the skills necessary to communicate more effectively and provide the suicidal inmate with a ready source of peer support.”

Photograph via Clallam County, Washington

The post The Nightmare of Prison Suicide Watch, Where Watching Is All We Do appeared first on Filter.

Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t ok. I wanted to die.

It feels like death by suicide has been holding my hand for a long time, leading me to an end that is irreversible and hard for anyone to understand. Three years after that phone call, I still contend with it regularly.

Too many adverse childhood experiences have contributed to my poor mental health. My safe harbor from those was my grandfather, who was my hero. I was lost and devastated when smoking took him away from me.

All of this helps to explain how two causes—mental health and reducing death and disease from smoking—have become central to my life. My dream is to help save other people’s lives in these areas. They are causes that constantly intersect.

Suicide is the second leading leading cause of death for people aged 10-24. Youth who struggle in school, particularly, are facing increased vulnerability.

September is Suicide Prevention Month. While middle-aged and older people are heavily impacted, suicide is the second leading leading cause of death for people aged 10-24 in the United States. Suicide rates for this age group increased by 52 percent from 2000-2021. In the US, there are 3,703 suicide attempts by kids in grades 9-12 per day. Of youth who die from suicide, 60 percent were living with depression. Youth who struggle in school, particularly, are facing increased vulnerability.

In the 2021 US Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), 42 percent of students reported experiencing persistent sadness or hopelessness, with 22 percent seriously contemplating suicide. Additionally, 18 percent formulated suicide plans and 10 percent attempted suicide.

As I look in the mirror and think about those numbers, I see the youthful me staring back. I’m painfully aware that the adults in my life thought they were doing the right things to raise a “productive member of society,” but many of their good intentions were the paving stones to Hell. My childhood home had a zero-tolerance mentality. Discipline was doled out quickly, harshly and often violently. I was hurt in ways that are hard to heal from. Those numbers could easily have included me.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has flagged the mental health crisis among youth. “If we seize this moment, step up for our children and their families in their moment of need, and lead with inclusion, kindness, and respect, we can lay the foundation for a healthier, more resilient, and more fulfilled nation,” reads the introduction of his 2021 advisory.

I agree with his words. But considering my two causes, I cannot help but notice a stark disconnect with another area of nationwide policy—to which fear-based misinformation spread by the same surgeon general’s office has contributed.

It’s deeply concerning that we have an unbalanced focus on stopping kids from vaping at almost any cost, while we ignore why they may be vaping.

The 2021 US National Youth Tobacco Survey shows that over 43 percent of students said they vaped because they felt stressed, anxious or depressed. Although the 2021 YRBS indicates that past 30-day vaping has seen a 45 percent decline since its 2019 peak, youth vaping continues to grab headlines and drive policy. It has frequently been portrayed as a cause of depression—despite evidence that it is better understood as a symptom.

In reviewing how schools enforce anti-vaping policies and how that affects children, I was left with the impression of many people who may have good intentions but whose efforts cause great harm.

It’s deeply concerning that we have an unbalanced focus on stopping kids from vaping at almost any cost—never mind that nicotine vapes are a far safer substitute for many kids who may otherwise be predisposed to smoke—while we ignore why they may be vaping.

Many of our schools have discipline policies rooted in a zero-tolerance strategy akin to the one I was raised with. That approach can inadvertently worsen mental health and foster substance use. Too many schools are focusing on punitive measures instead of emphasizing empathy and education, and vaping, together with other drug use, is often treated like a criminal issue.

Those zero-tolerance policies entail consequences such as suspension and expulsion. And we know that Black and Brown students are far more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled.

Instances involving on-campus law enforcement have resulted in kids caught vaping being arrested, tased and beaten.

Schools across the US are using law enforcement as “resource officers.” Police working on school grounds are often used to deal with non-criminal activities, such as student behavior issues like vaping. Instances involving on-campus law enforcement have resulted in kids caught vaping being arrested, tased and beaten.

Involving law enforcement in this way exacerbates negative mental health outcomes and increases “student shame, alienation, rejection, and breaking of healthy adult bonds,” as the American Psychological Association has noted. Impacted students are more likely to exhibit antisocial behavior, drop out of school and suffer from depression.

These actions contribute to a phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline. Students of color and other marginalized youth face higher risks of being ensnared in this pipeline, which pushes them out of the classroom and criminalizes them.

With the so-called “War on Drugs” and other factors, this has been a disturbing reality since long before kids started vaping. But vaping has become a new funnel into that pipeline.

There are cases of schools using the police to ticket and fine students. In some cases, students are required to go to court if they’re caught vaping. This means they miss school, and their parents must take the day off from work. Fines and loss of work are detrimental to low-income families. Some school districts send unpaid fines to collection agencies, including those for vaping. These actions can lead to wage garnishments and loss of driving privileges. Additional financial strains on these families can affect the mental health of all family members.

We must avoid punitive measures that exclude, humiliate and harm mental health.

Some schools, like those in Texas, mandate alternative education programs for students caught vaping. While these actions aim to protect students’ physical and mental health, their efficacy remains unproven.

Schools use various methods to determine if children are vaping—methods I don’t recall hearing about when many youth were smoking, with far higher health risks to themselves and others. School staff use security cameras, peer under stall walls, or remove entrance and stall doors to monitor for potential vaping. This amounts to surveillance and denial of privacy, with more mental health implications.

Reading about several cases of kids being strip-searched at school when staff suspects a student has a vape has been heartbreaking. Strip searches are mostly conducted without parental consent and can have long-lasting traumatic effects on students. The American Bar Association notes that they can cause children to “experience anxiety, depression, loss of concentration, sleep disturbances, difficulty performing in school, phobic reactions, shame, guilt, and other lasting emotional scars.”

Due to my own traumatic childhood experiences, I find it easy to relate to these kids standing half-naked and shivering as they were being searched. I can feel their humiliation. And while this will make some people uncomfortable to hear, I know that for some of those kids, it feels like a form of “visual rape.”

The 2023 theme for World Suicide Prevention Day is “Creating Hope Through Action.” Suicide prevention is complex and has many strands, but there are some clear steps we can take.

One of them is to reassess zero-tolerance school policies and their enforcement. We must ensure that policies prioritize the well-being of students, avoiding punitive measures that exclude, humiliate and harm mental health.

Photograph via Rawpixel/Public Domain 

The post Youth Suicide Prevention and Zero-Tolerance School Policies appeared first on Filter.

Research by USA Today and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that across nine Midwestern states, over 450 farmers died by suicide between 2014-2018. This is likely an undercount because some data is missing. Over a similar period, the nonprofit agricultural organization Farm Aid has seen calls to its crisis hotline almost double.

The findings support another January study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that farming, along with mining, coal and oil, and construction, is among the occupations with the highest suicide rates. Suicide rates nationally have increased 40 percent in under 20 years.

There is no tidy explanation for why more farmers are dying of suicide; the factors are simultaneously economic, social and cultural. “We like to identify something as the cause,” said psychologist Ted Matthews to USA Today. “Right now, they talk about commodity prices being the cause, and it’s definitely a cause, but it is not the only one by any stretch.”

Total farm debts are reaching a peak not matched in nearly 40 years. As of 2020, farmers have over $400 billion in both real-estate and other debts, an amount greater than the entire gross state product of Maryland. Prices for the most common crops—soybean, corn and wheat—peaked in 2012 but have lost half their value as of 2019.

In 2019, historic floods drenched over a million acres of land throughout the Midwest and along the Missouri River. The floods caused close to $3 billion in property damage and killed at least three people.

This and other weather calamities prevented farmers last year from planting nearly 20 million acres of crops—an area roughly equal to the state of South Carolina. These financial and economic hardships are forcing farmers to make difficult decisions, like selling off their family legacies or switching occupations.

But if farmers are facing unprecedented economic hardships, they also have unique difficulties getting mental healthcare services. Part of this is due to supply. Rural counties overall have fewer mental healthcare providers-per person—63 per 100,000 residents, compared to 146 in urban counties. The disparity is even greater for prescribing psychiatrists—urban counties have more than three times the access of rural ones. 

The other challenge for farmers is stigma around mental health and seeking help. Experts describe male farmers, especially, as retreating rather than confronting anxiety, depression or other illnesses.

Neither does it help that psychologists and psychiatrists may not understand a farmer’s lifestyle, occupation and values. This lack of cultural competency is not uncommon in mental healthcare; Filter has reported on the challenges for Black and Brown people in accessing psychedelic and general mental healthcare, for example.

One bright spot in all of this is that families devastated by suicide are speaking up. Theresia Gillie lost her husband, Keith, at age 53 in April 2017, and she now shares her story with others at risk. “I want growers to understand you’re not alone in this boat,” she said. “There’s others that are really struggling, too. And we’re going to find an avenue through this.” 

State officials in Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin are also taking preventative measures, including hiring more psychiatrists in rural areas, giving financial assistance to farmers in need of care, and raising awareness about suicide and how to spot red flags. A Wisconsin Representative, Joan Ballweg, is proposing a dedicated suicide hotline run by and for farmers.

Longer-term solutions for farmers, of course, will require more than just targeted suicide prevention measures. An existential crisis in farming communities, compounded by global economic patterns and an ever-changing climate, requires more attention from state and federal governments.

But talking about a problem is the first step. “We want farmers to feel like they’re being understood,” said Angie Sullivan, a Wisconsin agriculture official. “You’d be surprised at how much just spending an hour [talking] with someone can help.”

Image of a farmhouse in Byron, Michigan by Clarence Cromwell via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0.

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