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Asked by anon-181141 to Millie, Lauren, Laura on 5 Jun 2018.
Question: Have you considered that prisoners contemplate suicide, or do it, because they feel that their life is at a complete loss? I think if activities or small jobs that pay tokens for non-contraband equipment (please don't ask me what), maybe it could significantly drop the suicide and mental health rate of prisoners?
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Lauren Burns answered on 5 Jun 2018:
Interestingly, research has shown that the better prisoners are treated, the less likely they are to re-offend, and more mentally healthy. In Norway, in an island called Bastoy, they have a ‘village’ of serious offenders, with a minimal number of guards, and Norway has the lowest re-offending rate in Europe.
Perhaps, this could be due to treating prisoners like people, and maybe that is linked to your theory of pay-tokens and jobs, because essentially that is just treating them like individuals in society. However, systems like this can always be abused, there is nothing to stop theft or extortion (for example), and these crimes still leave victims (because criminals can be victims too). Also, yes their mental well-being may be improved, but some serious mental health conditions are there before even entering prison (or arise during), but these serious conditions can only be improved with therapy or medication, and sometimes in prison it is harder to access these methods of care.
It is an incredibly interesting subject, and I think it is a fantastic question, thank you for asking it. If you would like to chat more about it, just ASK!
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Laura Hemming answered on 6 Jun 2018:
I think this is a really interesting question. There’s currently lots of research which looks at what factors might make somebody want to live, instead of focussing only on the things that might make somebody think more about suicide.
Several prisons in the UK offer education and employment opportunities for prisoners. Some prisons do this better than others – in that there are more opportunities in some prisons than others. In these prisons, prisoners are invited to work in a range of workshops which can range from things like laundry, to printing to baking. I’ve included a link below which highlights some of the good work being done by prisoners at a bakery in HMP Manchester. Prisoners get paid a small wage for these jobs which gets added to their in-prison account. This money can be spent on luxury items such as snacks, toiletries and phone credit.
What would be interesting is to compare the rates of suicide between those people who are in education or employment and those who aren’t – it could be that the rates are much lower for those who have meaningful work. This could be followed up by a qualitative study where we could ask prisoners how they feel that their employment contributes to their suicidal thoughts. This is exactly how research questions are born! 🙂
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