The attorneys of Rosenblum & Reisman can help you determine if a person’s civil rights were violated if that person has attempted or committed suicide while in confinement. 

Suicide Attempts While in Legal Custody

Preventing Suicide in Prison or Other Confinement
The attorneys of Rosenblum & Reisman can help you determine if a person’s civil rights were violated if that person has attempted or committed suicide while in jail, prison, a mental health facility, or in other confinement.  Our attorneys can help you determine if the reasonable standard of care was met for preventing suicide.

 

Foreseeing  Suicidal Behavior
There have been a number of cases decided that do indeed hold that law enforcement and corrections officers and their employers may be held liable for failure to prevent a suicide by a prisoner or detainee. Cases dealing with mental patients and prisoners clearly establish that the state has a duty of supervision with respect to a suicidal person in its care and custody. Wilson vs Sponable, supra. The duty to protect a suicidal person from killing himself has been further extended to include a Sheriff as well as those in charge of a reform school. Lavigne vs Allen, 36 AD 2d 981 (3rd Dept. 1981); McBride vs State of New York; 52 Misc. 2d 880 (Ct Cl. 1967). There are limits to this duty. No basis has been found that would expand the duty to protect detainees from their own suicidal behavior by providing separate facilities, extra staff, and around the clock psychiatric care. Comiskey vs State of New York, 71 AD 2d 699 (9180). The standard is that liability attaches where suicide is a hazard reasonably to be foreseen or a risk reasonably to be perceived. Flaherty vs State of New York, 296 NY 342, 346 (1947). The exercise of due care would require that steps be taken that reasonably would prevent such suicides.

Unfortunately, not all law enforcement or corrections officials are trained in evaluating persons and diagnosing personality or emotional disorders that may lead to attempts at suicide. It would be unfair to expect them to make such diagnoses. And, in fact, that is not really what the appropriate standard of care would require. Due care is, in reality, common sense informed by the knowledge and experience of the person who is expected to exercise it.

It is fairly common knowledge, for example, that certain kinds of people will be more severely affected by the experience of arrest and detention than others. These people pose the greatest risk of suicide attempts as a response to arrest and confinement. Persons under the influence of drugs or alcohol, for instance, are considered high risks because they tend to become severely depressed when the effects of these substances wear off. The problem is especially acute where the intoxication or drug use has led to some criminal act such as vehicular homicide. Guilt, fear, hopelessness and depression are quite foreseeable under such circumstances.

Persons of some status in the community who are arrested for some particularly shocking or shameful crime may become severely depressed. A man of respectable middle class background who is charged with a sex offense or child abuse may become quite despondent while in custody. Such a person would be more likely than many others to attempt suicide.

Persons known to have been exhibiting obvious symptoms of mental illness also pose a risk of self injury or suicide. Often, their history of problems is known to their custodians. If it is, there is reason to believe that the inmate is more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior than others. Other ways in which officers may learn of a high potential for suicidal behavior might be their own previous experience with the detainee, the opinion of a mental health professional or because they have received warnings from the detainee’s family or acquaintances. Knowledge like this constitutes notice of the special risk posed by the detainee and gives rise to the duty to take precautions that are reasonably calculated to reduce the risk.

Preventive Measures For Suicide in Prison
At the general level, administrators and supervisors of detention and corrections facilities are required to recognize the risk of suicide by detainees and to provide for regulations and procedures that minimize that risk. Such regulations at their most general include confiscation of personal items, such as belts and other articles of clothing, that might be used to facilitate a suicide. Any departure from such regulations may supply the necessary negligence to establish liability should a suicide result. Young vs City of Ann Arbor, 119 Mich. App. 512, 326 NW 2d 547 (9182).

More recently, with the helpful collaboration of mental health professionals, procedures have been developed for screening inmates and detainees to identify those who pose a particular risk of suicide. This screening is supplemented by procedures that come into play once an inmate has been identified as a high risk. These may include special detention quarters, surveillance and consultation with mental health professionals.

With regard to specific detainees, if there is some notice that the detainee poses a particular and immediate risk of suicide, persons who have actual knowledge of this risk may be held liable if they depart from any prescribed procedure for dealing with such detainees or if they fail exercise due care above and beyond such procedures.

Wilson vs Sponable, supra; McBride vs State of New York, supra. When such a case comes to trail, the question of whether the suicide was foreseeable and the question of whether custodians acted negligently in not preventing it are both questions of fact to be decided by the jury (or the court in a nonjury trial). Lavigne vs Allen, supra.

 Limits to Liability For Suicide in Jail
 There is a limit to exposure to liability. Unfortunately, it is not as precisely defined as we might wish. In the area of State liability for suicides of mental patients committed to State care, the courts have said that a hospital is not an insurer of the safety of its patients. That is to say, there is no strict liability. In a mental hospital, committees are present because they are mentally ill. They are in the care and custody of people who know more about mental illness and the likelihood of suicide than any police officer or corrections officer ever could. And yet, there have been suicides for which such hospitals and their staffs have not been held liable. Even where a patient’s suicidal tendencies are known or suspected, the State or a State hospital is held only to a reasonable standard of care, and is not required to maintain constant, unremitting, individual supervision over each patient so afflicted. Fowler vs State, 192 Misc. 15,18 NYS 2d 860 (1948); Brigante vs State, 33 NYS 2d 354 (Ct. Cl. 192). The same recognition of the fiscal, logistical and even architectural limitations on the ability of corrections and detention facilities to prevent suicides of inmates have been acknowledged by the courts. Wilson vs Sponable, supra pp 69; Comiskey vs State, 71 AD 2d 699. (1969).

 Liability Under Federal Civil Rights Law For Suicide Cases
 As a postscript, the reader should be aware that the foregoing discussion is about liability of officers and their supervisors and employers under State law. There are other laws that apply in the custodial suicide situation. The most notable of these is 42 USC, section 1983, also known as The Civil Rights Act of 1971. This law permits a person whose constitutionally protected rights have been violated by a person who acts on behalf of a state government to sue the violator for civil damages in the federal courts. In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has held that a “person,” within the meaning of this statute, maybe a police or sheriff’s department, a municipal government or other agency of state or local government. As a result, there is considerable incentive to use this statute as a means of brining a municipal party into lawsuits because of such a party’s “deep pockets.”

In the area of custodial suicide and self inflicted injuries, there are a number of theories under which these actions are brought. The most important of these would be based on the fact that mental illness that leads to many suicides is, ultimately, a medical condition. Failure of the custodian to provide treatment or preventive measures may be a violation of the duty to provide reasonable medical care to persons in custody. Hamilton vs Chaffin, 506 F.2d 904 (5th Cir. 1975). To lock someone up and deny him/her obviously needed medical attention is cruel and unusual punishment if it is done with “deliberate indifference” to the inmate’s medical needs. Estelle vs Gamble, 429 US 97 (1976); Reeves vs City of Jackson, 608 F 2d 644 (5th Cir. 1979).

Conclusion Regarding Suicide in Prison, Jail, or Mental Institution
 In order to reduce the risk of liability of officers and their supervisors and employers, facility administrators should implement effective screening measures to identify high risk inmates. They must additionally implement procedures and conditions of confinement that will protect those inmates from themselves once they have been identified as high risk.

Furthermore, they must establish clear and effective liaison with appropriate mental health care providers. Such personnel can assist in developing appropriate training for police and corrections personnel. Line supervisors and officers, in turn, must follow these procedures very carefully. Last, and certainly not least, all personnel must develop an understanding of the nature of the duty of care that the law imposes in the custodial situation. Such an understanding leads to the automatic application of informed common sense in foreseeing and reducing risk.

It is hoped that the forgoing discussion of the general climate of liability exposure in the area of dealing with arrestees, detainees and prisoners who may be suicidal will assist officers in learning to recognizing where the risks are and to conduct themselves in a manner that minimizes those risks. The point to remember is that prisoners frequently present a foreseeable risk of suicide and self injury at both police lockups and correctional facilities.

For more information on Preventing Suicide in Jail or Prison:

Suicide Watch For Sheriffs and Prison Staff - Preventing Suicide in Jail
www.county.org/resources/library/county_mag/county/133/suicide.html

Juvenile Suicides in Confinement
http://www.nicic.org/Library/020131

www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/ suicide/resource_jails_prisons.pdf