Prison suicide questions institutional conditions

by insideprison.com, April 2006

27 year-old inmate Michael Keohane used a torn sheet to hang himself in his cell at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center on Sunday, April 9.

Keohane, originally from New Hampshire, wrote notes prior to his suicide that revealed a mind grappling with relationship problems outside the prison.

Keohane was convicted of first-degree murder by an Essex court in 2000 for beating a man to death with a baseball bat, apparently over a money dispute. The appeal of his sentence was turned down, possibly contributing to his psychological distress.

Questions have been raised about the integrity of the correctional facility, Souza-Baranowski, a technology-driven super-max prison that keeps its inmates under constant surveillance and strict conditions. With all of the suicides that occurred last year in Massachusettes prisons being committed by those diagnosed as mentally-ill, it came as a surprise to many that Keohane, who had no history of mental illness, managed to successfully hang himself in his cell. In addition, Keohane was being held in a segregated special management unit for "problem-prisoners."

Along with the higher rates of deaths involving violence and drug overdose among incarcerated inmates, rates of prison suicides are up to 10 times greater than that of the general population, a recent survey of Ontario inmates found. In many cases, staff neglected to start any intervention for suicidal inmates even after documenting case reports concerning their suicidal tendencies. The disproportionately high rate of drug abuse in prison, coupled with the disproporionately low availability of drug treatment interventions may have something to do with the higher than normal incidence of suicide in prison.

see inside prison's profile on Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center

For more info on prison suicides, see BBC's online feature, Can prison suicides be curbed?