KILLING TIME
The increase in prison suicides is evidence not of a repressive regime, but of leniency,
observes Theodore Dalrymple THERE were more suicides in our prisons last year than in any previous year: 91 in total. This uncomfortable fact will no doubt be used in certain quarters further to dis- solve, in the name of compassion, the dis- tinction between victims and perpetrators. If 91 prisoners killed themselves last year alone, does this not prove that prisoners suffer terribly? And if they suffer terribly, does this not prove that they are themselves victims, in this case of a vengeful society?
Nearly two thirds of the suicides were among prisoners who had not yet been sentenced, and here it is true that our criminal-justice system, with its inter- minable delays, has something to answer for. It has long been known that prisoners on remand are particularly likely to kill themselves, for the anxiety caused by not knowing one's fate can indeed be agonis- ing: better years of imprisonment than months of uncertainty.
But is the concern frequently expressed in the press about suicides in prison gen- uinely humanitarian or mere liberal attitu- dinising? After all, there have long been more suicides in psychiatric hospitals than in prisons, and not much ink seems to have been spilt over them in our newspapers. Moreover, prison officers have a suicide rate as high or higher than that of their wards, and it has long been a source of bit- terness to them that no one seems to have noticed, or at least publicised, the fact. A dispassionate observer of our national life might be forgiven for supposing that crimi- nals were regarded by the British intelli- gentsia with special tenderness.
The rise in the number of suicides in our jails is indeed alarming, but more because of what it tells us about modern British life than because of what it tells us about our jails. For the fact is that prison is the contin- uation of slum life by other means.
The vast majority of prisoners belong to precisely the social group — young male adults of the lowest social class — among whom the suicide rate has been rising fast, while it has been falling among all other social groups. The number of suicides among prisoners that one would expect if their suicide rate simply reflected that of their peers who remained at liberty is probably about 50 or 60. The excess is eas- ily accounted for by the chagrins of incar- ceration: for example, many a young woman takes the opportunity presented by the imprisonment of her boyfriend to bid him farewell, taking his child with her. This, naturally enough, causes the impris- oned boyfriend the utmost distress for a week or two — certainly long enough to hang himself.
It is not only suicides that have been increasing in jail, but suicidal gestures: over- doses, cut wrists, swallowed razor-blades, attempted hangings, head-bangings on the wall etc. They have been increasing ever since it was decreed from on high that such gestures were never henceforth to be con- sidered the formerly punishable offence of wasting medical time, but were to be treat- ed instead as signs of serious distress that automatically merited medical attention and sympathy.
Paradoxically, such apparent humanity may have increased the number of deaths by suicide in prison for two reasons: first, by positively encouraging gestures that in the nature of things sometimes go wrong so that death results even when not intended, and, second, by spreading medical attention so thinly that proper attention cannot be given to truly disturbed people. If prisoners lost remission for cutting their wrists, then those who did so nonetheless would prima facie be more likely to be seriously suicidal, and efforts could then be directed to give them succour. It is sentimentality that kills, not realism.
There is another possible reason for the increase in the suicide rate in prison: the increasing frequency of brutality in prison, not by the officers (who are, if anything, less brutal than they were) but by the pris- oners themselves. The number of prisoners asking for protection from other prisoners has risen fourfold in ten years, and, while such requests were once confined to sexual offenders, they are now heard from all cat- egories of prisoner.
Violence to the self and violence to others are intimately connected, and not only in prison. The number of suicide attempts has been rising outside prison as well as inside, and, interestingly, the number of such attempts by young males has been increasing both relatively and absolutely. Whereas for many decades many more women attempted suicide than men, for the first time more men than women are now attempting suicide — predominantly in the social group from which prisoners are drawn.
I estimate that about 70 per cent of the men who take overdoses in Britain have committed violent offences against their girl- friends or wives, and, of those, three quarters have been violent to others, often in the course of committing other serious crimes into the bargain. Each year, therefore, there are at least 40,000 young British men outside prison who take overdoses who have beaten women, 30,000 of whom have also been vio- lent • to others. Moreover, my experience leads me to the conclusion that most of this violence is serious, repetitive, calculated and transferable from one victim to another, though rarely dealt with by the law. If there were any justice in the world, therefore, at least half these men would receive life sen- tences with no possibility of parole: that is to say, 20,000 every year.
Suicide in prison is thus but a pale reflec- tion of the increasing brutality and lawless- ness of British lower-class life. Far from being a manifestation of harsh repression, it is a manifestation of leniency.
Often prisoners attempt suicide because, on coming into prison, they discover that their 'enemies' — people to whom they owe money for drugs, or the relatives of people whose house their brother is believed to have burgled — are also in the prison. They expect a slash attack in the exercise yard with a razor, a severe beating or boiling water thrown in their face. They can either do nothing and spend their sen- tences in fear, or ask for protection. If they ask for protection, however, they are auto- matically known as sex offenders, whatever their actual offence might be, and so far as other prisoners are concerned they will remain sex offenders for ever. Their repu- tation as a sex offender will also reach the housing estate on which they live, and since most people living in housing estates have the mentality of prisoners, their lives will henceforth hardly be worth living. And they know only too well that the law will not protect them.
There is a third option: suicide. In the circumstances, it seems a reasonable choice. The surprise is not that so many but that so few make it.
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