“Prison governors throughout the UK are working very hard with their safer custody teams in prisons to ensure we are doing everything possible to support prisoners in our care and ensure that we remain safe, decent and secure,” national officer Mark Icke told Sputnik on Thursday.
Earlier the same day, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the oldest penal reform charity in the world, said that 82 prisoners took their lives in 2014, taking the number of suicides behind bars to its highest level in seven years. Among the 82 were 14 young adults, aged between 18 and 24. In 2007, the figure was 92.
The numbers are based on notifications it received from the Justice Ministry, which records deaths in custody. However, official data from the ministry is expected to be published next week.
“In total, 235 people died in prisons in England and Wales during 2014. More than 120 prisoners died of natural causes and a further 24 deaths are yet to be classified by authorities,” the Howard League said a press release Thursday.
“Whilst we cannot be sure why people take their own lives or why there has been an increase many will speculate that it could be due to the staffing pressures, economic situations, mental health or general health reasons and in some cases it could be geographical,” Icke told Sputnik, adding that the PGA recently gave evidence at an independent review into prison suicides among young adults led by Labour Party politician Lord Toby Harris.
The Howard League also reported that prisoners who were held on remand while waiting for trial were more likely to take their own lives, accounting for one in three of suicides, but only one in seven of the prison population.
The Guardian reported that prisons minister Andrew Selous reacted sharply to the criticism from the charity, which was established in 1866 and is named after noted eighteenth century prison reformer John Howard. "They are deliberately misrepresenting the situation in our prison for their own ends," the minister told the newspaper. "This helps no one – least of all the vulnerable individuals in prison whose wellbeing is the absolute priority of prisons staff and ministers alike."
In August last year, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, told the Independent that a lack of resources being spent on the prison system was leading directly to increasing numbers of inmates killing themselves. "The reasons why any individual who is despairing tips over into a suicide are very diverse," said the inspector. "But if you put together the lack of staffing levels, the overcrowding, the lack of activity, then I don’t think it is credible to deny that those are contributory factors." In the interview, Hardwick declared that prisoner suicides were "not acceptable in a civilized country," and that sufficient funds needed to be allocated to deal with the rise in the population.
