Ind. Jail Changes to Target Inmate Suicide

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By South Bend Tribune

Published: 06/16/2003

A psychiatrist will now be on-site at the county jail to try to prevent suicide among inmates.
The sheriff said other things are changing, too, to improve inmate safety at the jail, which was opened on June 30, 2001.
In response to an April 30 editorial in The Tribune about two recent suicides in the county jail, Sheriff Frank Canarecci said recently that he prepared a statement.
The newspaper editorial said: 'A thorough investigation, with all questions answered, is necessary. Immediately, (Canarecci) and the jail administrators should make changes necessary to prevent any more deaths.'
Canarecci said May 21 that his staff is implementing a four-part plan to reduce the potential for suicide among inmates, 'with the goal of preventing all suicide.'
In the editorial, the newspaper staff wrote that 'it is possible that two deaths by suicide in the St. Joseph County Jail could have been beyond the control of jail personnel (but) that should not be possible.' Curtis L. Collier, 45, died Feb. 8, some three hours after he was booked in the jail. He looped his shoe strings around a hand rail beside the toilet, out of the view of officers. He then put his head in the loop and lay down, hanging himself.
Gregory Minix, 18, allegedly hanged himself in the jail on April 23 with a bed sheet tied around a bar on a window. He was on antidepressant medication. Canarecci said that every inmate goes through a classification process during booking, being evaluated first by jail staff and then by medical staff.
'The way it used to be,' he said, 'when the medical staff or classification officers thought the inmate needed a psychiatric evaluation, a caseworker from Madison Center would be called in to do an analysis. If the caseworker thought there was a need for a doctor, they'd be called.'
Now, Canarecci said, at least three times a week, a psychiatrist, instead of caseworkers, will come in and do the assessments.
He said that Madison Center has agreed to extend this service at no additional cost to the county, as a part of the existing contract with the county. '(The psychiatrist) won't be on our staff,' Canarecci said. 'He will come in and be on call.'
'Secondly, the classification officers at the jail, along with the Memorial (Hospital) medical staff and the Madison Hospital professionals, have all renewed their commitment to work closely together to identify any potentially suicidal inmates, as well as responding to the mental health needs of non-suicidal inmates,' Canarecci said.
The 92 special deputies who work in the jail as correctional officers have completed additional suicide-prevention training, Canarecci said.
'This is not a direct response to the suicides, it's something we were doing anyway,' he said.
After the suicides, Canarecci said, he called the U.S. Department of Justice National Institute of Corrections in California and the state of Indiana to conduct inspections.
As a result of the state inspection, Canarecci said jail officials removed the hand rails from the toilet areas and some clothing hooks in the cells.
The Department of Justice, he said, will conduct the federal inspection in June. Canarecci's goal is to make sure the new jail's policies and procedures 'fit the needs of the new facility and see if changes are needed.'
'While there can never be an absolute guarantee that the risk of suicide has been completely eliminated,' the sheriff wrote in his statement, he 'sincerely believes that the plan being followed will be a crucial first step toward reducing the risk of suicide among inmates.'

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