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Inmate suicide attempts rare, but taken seriously

JANESVILLE — If an inmate at the Rock County Jail threatens or attempts suicide, Skip Drew or one of his colleagues at Rock County Crisis Intervention gets the call.

Inmates serious about suicide typically try to hang themselves with their sheets as they throw themselves off upper tiers in the jail. Most often, other inmates save them, Drew said.

“There aren’t that many suicide attempts (at the jail), but many inmates express suicidal thoughts,” he said. “Whenever these are thrown out, we and the jail staff must take it seriously and err on the side of caution.”

In 2007, one inmate attempted suicide at the jail, said Cmdr. Tom Gehl, jail supervisor for the Rock County Sheriff’s Department.

The last time an inmate killed himself at the jail was Dec. 17, 2005, when Christopher Brown, a defendant in a rape case, hanged himself.

Sometimes, inmates will cut themselves with some utensil or bang their heads against the wall. But those actions typically are to gain attention rather than commit suicide, Drew said.

If the risk is deemed significant, the inmate is put on suicide watch, is confined to a booking cell with no furniture other than a steel bunk without sheets and is dressed in a heavy “Ferguson gown” that cannot be ripped into strips, Drew said.

A corrections officer is supposed to check an inmate on suicide watch at least every 15 minutes.

If the risk continues, the inmate could be admitted to either Mendota or Winnebago mental health institutes.

A common misconception among inmates, Drew said, is that acting strangely or in a suicidal way will get them into a situation better than jail, a mental hospital, for instance.

But he noted that the suicide-watch cell is far more Spartan than a normal cell. And if an inmate is sent to a psychiatric unit, any time spent there doesn’t count against his or her sentence, Drew said.