In response to the deaths of three inmates by suicide this year, Clark County Sheriff Chuck Atkins is asking county councilors to fund new suicide prevention measures at the jail.
Sheriff Atkins has submitted a request to include an additional $833,000 as part of the agency’s 2017-18 biannual budget to pay for the upgrades, which include replacing jail beds with suicide resistant beds. All three of the inmate suicides that happened in 2016 involved the jail beds.
“I feel a strong responsibility to mitigate the risk of future suicides as much as possible and installing suicide-resistant bunks is a necessary first step,” Atkins said in a press release.
The funds would also add a system that monitors vital signs of inmates who have been identified as being at-risk of committing suicide or hurting themselves. The equipment attaches to an inmate’s hand or finger and allows staff to monitor when an inmate is in distress.
Additionally, the money would go toward upgrading the inmate television system, expanding educational programming but more importantly, allowing staff to add messages to scroll across screens.
Jail Chief Ric Bishop said that doing so would immerse inmates with information on how to get help if they need it.
“It’s a constant message throughout the day, throughout the facility,” Bishop said.
The newly proposed changes aim at tackling an ongoing problem at the Clark County Jail.
Between 2007 and 2012, a total of 13 inmates at the Clark County Jail committed suicide, according to The Columbian archives. The crisis prompted a remodel of the jail, which included replacing shower heads with shorter-nozzled models, removing protruding fire sprinklers and converting older-style ventilation screens to suicide-resistant screens.
Corrections deputies now go through crisis intervention training which works to improve how officers approach mental illness.
“As much as we do to mitigate suicides it seems to never be enough,” Bishop said in a press release. “It’s very difficult to prevent someone from harming themselves but we have an obligation to mitigate the risks as we identify them.”
