Inmate Suicides in South Carolina Prisons

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) — “The types of folks that are coming into prison, they have all kinds of issues to handle,” says Clark Newsom, South Carolina Department of Corrections. 

For some inmates in South Carolina, life will go no further than the barbed wire fences they see everyday. Newsom says that reality is a contributing factor for inmate suicides. 

Since the year 2000, data shows thirty-eight inmates have committed suicide, seven in 2005, six in 2010 and already in 2013, two inmates have taken their own lives. 

In that same time span, twenty-four inmates were murdered. 

Newsom says both bad behavior and suicidal tendencies can put inmates in isolation, away from the general population. 

“Some cells have cameras, if they don’t have cameras the inmates are checked on every 15 minutes,” says Newsom. 

That’s similar to the schedule convicted kidnapper and rapist, Ariel Castro was on in Ohio. 

He was reportedly in a cell alone and checked on every thirty minutes. But, still he took his own life allegedly with a bed sheet. 

In South Carolina, Newsom says suicidal inmates can be left without bed linens. 

“They can have what is known as a suicide blanket, it’s a blanket that is not easily torn or anything that could used where you could possibly hang yourself,” says Newsom. 

“Any past one is too many, one is too many,” says Newsom.

In South Carolina, when a person is convicted and sentenced to prison they undergo mental evaluations before being placed in a permanent facility. Once they are taken to their permanent facility to serve their time, if at any time they are found to be suicidal they are further evaluated and treated. In some cases, treatment means returning to Columbia.