While suicides are prevalent in jails and prisons, they are entirely preventable, according to Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
Deitch noted that incarcerated people have access only to the materials that are given to them by staff and only have the privacy allowed by staff.
The sheets both Marlow and Campbell used were provided by the prison and both died while under constant camera observation.
“[Incarcerated people are] under the control of staff in a tightly controlled environment where they shouldn’t have access to the tools that they use to kill themselves,” she said. “They shouldn’t have the means. They shouldn’t have the opportunity. So, it is absolutely a preventable form of death.”