Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, said deaths like Pope’s raise broader questions about whether prison systems are identifying people in crisis, supervising them properly, and keeping them out of conditions that can make suicide more likely. Prison suicides, she said, can reflect failures related to supervision, suicide-prevention protocols and housing decisions, especially when vulnerable people are placed in isolation or left with the means to harm themselves.
“If there’s one obligation that prisons have, it’s keeping the people inside safe and alive,” Deitch said. “These are not people who were sent to prison to die.”
There are many reasons why young inmates are dying, Deitch said. Her decades of studying prisons have taught her that most suicides are preventable. “It could also be that people feel really threatened in that environment, and they would rather take their lives than face whatever they’re going to face,” she added.