Suicides in Prison and the Safer Prisons Agenda
| Author | Alison Liebling |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050204900208 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
140
Suicides in Prison and the
Safer Prisons Agenda
Alison Liebling discusses the new Safer Prisons strategy, which aims
to reduce suicides by improving the general treatment of prisoners
and encouraging the ‘decency agenda’. She goes on to describe the
planned evaluation of the Safer Local Prisons Programme, which
forms one part of the overall attempt to improve the care of
prisoners at risk.
Programmes work (have successful
‘outcomes’) only in so far as they
introduce the appropriate ideas and
opportunities (‘mechanisms’) to groups
in the appropriate social and cultural
conditions (‘contexts’). (Pawson and
Tilley, 1997, p.57)
Change is a multi-level, cross-
organisational process that unfolds in
an iterative and messy fashion over a
period of years and comprises a series
of interlocking projects. (Burnes, 2000,
p.300)
Reducing the number of suicides in prison
has become the number one priority of the
Director General of HM Prison Service,
Martin Narey (Narey, 2002a). During 2001
there were 72 self-inflicted deaths in prison
and during the year 2000 there were 81.
These figures represent a modest decrease
on previous years, despite a continuing
increase in the size of the prison population.
Prisoners under 21 constituted 18 per cent
of these deaths in 2001. This is higher than
the 11 per cent they make up of the total
prison population. There have been
numerous policy initiatives aimed at
reducing the suicide rate in prisons,
including the ‘Caring for the Suicidal in
Custody’ strategy launched in 1994. This
was regarded at the time as a carefully
researched and ‘fundamentally sound’
document, which required joint
responsibility between health care and
discipline staff for prisoners at risk.
However, it suffered from major problems
of implementation (HMCIP, 1999); that is,
several important aspects of the policy were
never fully put into operation, so that there
was little “ownership of the strategy by
senior managers”, case reviews were
infrequent, staff were insufficiently trained,
and there were no quality checks on “vital
documentation” (HMCIP, 1999).
The policy also suffered from major
problems of context. It was conceived in the
post-Woolf era, when prison populations
were at an all-time low and regimes,
relationships and justice were at the centre
stage in penal thinking. Its title, ‘Caring for
the Suicidal in Custody’, resonated with
sentiments expressed by Joe Pilling
amongst others, in his ‘Back to Basics’
lecture (Pilling, 1992) that respect,
individuality and relationships were at the
heart of decently run prisons. However, an
interdisciplinary strategy, with case
conferences, shared responsibility and
flexible approaches to prisoners at risk was
less suited to an operational context in
which population crises1, security crises2,
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