30% increase in US prison suicide deaths: Justice Department
The US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) says the number of suicide deaths in the country’s state prisons rose by some 30 percent just over a one-year period between 2013 and 2014.
“From 2013 to 2014, the number of suicides in state prisons increased by 30 percent, from 192 to 249 suicides,” the bureau said in a news release published on Thursday.
Suicide in US state prisons accounted for 7 percent of all 3,483 inmates who died in the year 2014, according to the BJS release.
The report noted that more than a third of jail deaths had occurred during an inmate’s first seven days behind bars.
In a separate report in the day, the bureau also announced that the number of old inmates dying in US prisons is sharply increasing due to diseases that afflict the elderly.
The BJS said a total of 3,483 inmates died in state prisons and 444 in federal prisons in 2014, the highest numbers on record since the bureau started counting in 2001.
The most common illnesses were cancer, heart disease and liver failure.
Gabriel Eber, a senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said old US prisoners have complex medical problems, are vulnerable to violence, and may require intensive care at the end of life.
“The prisons are not equipped to handle the geriatric population,” he noted.
Statistics show that the number of federal and state prisoners age 55 or older reached more than 151,000 in 2014, undergoing a growth of 250 percent since 1999.
With over 2 million people behind bars, the US has the world’s largest prison population.
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