Nearly half of suicides in prisons follow healthcare failures noted by watchdog

Four in 10 prisoners who took their own lives in custody were denied adequate healthcare before their deaths, according to damning new figures exposing the scale of neglect inside Britain’s overcrowded prisons.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

Inmates are legally entitled to receive the same standard of healthcare as someone living in the community. However, official findings uncovered by The Independent show in 101 out of 233 self-inflicted deaths investigated by the prisons watchdog between 2020 and 2023, the mental or physical healthcare did not meet this requirement.

In each case, a clinical reviewer assessed whether the care was equivalent to what they would expect outside of jail as part of investigations into the deaths by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO). In many of the self-inflicted deaths, failings related to mental healthcare.

The chair of the justice committee, Andy Slaughter, said “we are failing people in custody” after the figures came to light, while the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, warned “without any doubt” there will be more potentially preventable deaths if action is not taken to drive up standards.

“We see it frequently in prisons that we inspect that there are people who just aren’t getting the support that they need,” he told The Independent. “If someone needs treatment, they need treatment.”

One grieving family described the treatment of prisoners as “medieval” after father-of-two Jason Lee McQuoid, 37, did not eat or sleep for three days as he begged for help after being segregated at HMP Risley, Cheshire. Despite repeatedly warning he was going to take his life, he was not seen by a mental health clinician in the 72 hours before his death.

“I can’t believe that human beings could watch another human being in such a desperate state – pleading for help – and not intervene,” his heartbroken aunt Joyce McQuoid told The Independent.