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Bleak House: Suicides in the Penitentiary

Oklahoma Watch

Most were in their late 20s or early 30s. All were in a type of isolated confinement, with 23-hour lockdown and one hour alone in an outdoor recreation yard or an underground concrete bunker.

All died by hanging themselves.

Between 2012 and 2015, nine inmates in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester took their own lives, giving Oklahoma’s only state-owned maximum security prison the highest suicide rate among corrections facilities. Its rate was six times that of the prison with the second highest rate, according to data from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

During those four years, a total of 25 inmates committed suicide, and those in McAlester represented 35 percent of them, although the prison housed about 3 percent of the state’s inmate population.

The two prisons with the next highest number – Lexington Assessment and Reception Center and the privately owned Lawton Correctional Facility – reported three suicides each during those years.

Causes have not been determined in all deaths in Oklahoma prisons in 2016, although one of four deaths ruled a suicide occurred at the penitentiary.

Unsuccessful suicide attempts also occur, but the Corrections Department doesn’t keep precise numbers.

The suicides at Oklahoma’s oldest prison have alarmed corrections officials and prisoner advocates, triggering changes in some policies.

Lynn Powell, president of OK CURE, an inmate advocacy group, said the trend may be due to isolation of inmates from human contact as well as inadequate medical care.

“The first thing that comes to mind is the 24-hour-a-day lockdown, where they don’t have yard time,” Powell said. “There’s less chance for contact. You’re stuck in one spot.”

The McAlester prison also is home to mostly long-term and violent offenders, as well as death-row inmates, and has a large number of offenders with mental illness.

Dr. Jana Morgan, chief mental health officer for the Corrections Department, likewise pointed to isolation as a possible driver of higher suicide rates. Scientific studies have found that prisoners subjected to long-term isolated confinement are more likely to engage in self-harm.

“As people are locked down more and in maximum security settings, the risk goes up,” Morgan said.

Corrections Department spokeswoman Terri Watkins said the department works hard to prevent prisoner suicide, but prevention can be difficult.

“We have monitoring that goes on, treatment that goes on, to try and prevent that from happening,” Watkins said. “It’s our ultimate goal for that never to happen. Sadly, it does.”

Prisoner advocates question whether enough is being done.

Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that produces in-depth and investigative journalism on a range of public-policy issues facing the state. For more Oklahoma Watch content, go to www.oklahomawatch.org.