At the Worcester County jail, correctional officers all carry a small metal tool that’s shaped like a J.
The inside curve of this tool is razor sharp, and its purpose is grim – meant for slicing through a handmade noose to bring down the body of an inmate who has tried to commit -- or who has committed – suicide.
“Unfortunately, I’ve been involved with numerous suicides in the institution,” said Captain Kevin Vanarsdalen, an officer at the Worcester County House of Correction who has personally seen eight inmate suicides in 25 years. “Probably three of those, I actually used the tool myself,” he said.
Since 2006, eight inmates have killed themselves inside Worcester County Jail. In that same time period, at least 65 men and women held in county-run jails statewide have taken their own lives.
The officers’ cut-down tools may be the last line of defense against a completed suicide, but they’re often too late. Death by asphyxiation happens in about seven minutes.
Officers like Vanarsdalen hope they never have to use that tool. More often, they turn to suicide watch cells as the default defense against inmate suicides.
In Worcester County, that’s Unit A-1 -- the high-risk tier. Sliding steel doors painted battleship grey each have a window the size of a sheet of paper. The 16 cells are suicide-proofed: nothing to tie a noose to and no materials to make one.
Inmates on this unit are stripped naked and given a one-piece smock, made of green, quilted material that can’t tear.
“A lot of guys come in and complain, they’re not allowed socks or underwear,” said officer Ryan Gasco, who works on A-1. “It’s not to embarrass them. It’s for their safety.”
Jail officials see suicide watch as an extreme but necessary measure to make sure an inmate can’t harm himself or herself.
Former inmates see it differently.
“You’re put into what they call a ‘Barney Rubble suit.’ They strip you naked, you’re put in this harm reducing outfit and put in a cell with a light turned on 24 hours a day,” said Michael Earielo, who served time at the Worcester County jail in 2013 and now runs a drop-in center in downtown Worcester offering peer recovery for addicts.
Earielo views the suicide watch practice as a harsh response with a dangerous backlash.
“How is it possible for me to say I need help when you’re actually going to give me torture?
It frightens people to even ask for help, knowing the condition they provide,” he said.
Inmates could spend days, or even weeks in suicide watch, and it’s up to the jail’s mental health staff to decide when an inmate can be released from the watch cell.
A federal investigation in 2008 called the property restrictions and lockdown rules at Worcester County Jail draconian. Investigators also concluded that the harsh conditions there would just make an inmate’s mental health problems worse.
“They’re locked down so they don’t get showers, they don’t get visits, they don’t get phone calls. They get finger foods,” said Lindsay Hayes, a national expert on suicide prevention in jails and prisons. “You’re not going get a very honest response from an inmate when you’re subjected to those conditions.”
Hayes is a firm believer in counseling inmates while on suicide watch and argues that county jails often fall woefully short.
“They see mental health once a day and normally not outside the cell,” said Hayes. “Usually, mental health comes in, there’s a food port that is in front of the cell, the food port door opens, the clinician leans down, and looks at the inmate, and says, ‘Are you suicidal today? How ya feelin’?’ And of course, if I was in that situation, I’d say, I’m feelin’ really good, doc, can I please get out of this cell and off the suicide watch?”
But what choice do jails have when confronted with a suicidal inmate? Jorge Veliz is a jail psychiatrist, whose for-profit company has millions of dollars of contracts with five county sheriffs in the state: Barnstable, Bristol, Middlesex, Norfolk and Plymouth.
Veliz sees the harshness of suicide watch, but doesn’t have a better option yet.
“It looks at times inhumane to put somebody who is saying ‘look, I am depressed, I want to kill myself,’ … in a room with that single cloth, unable to rip apart,” said Veliz. “It feels at times like it’s not fair for that person. Do we have anything better? I don’t know because every place in the world is about the same.”
The Justice Department called on Worcester County to build a special needs unit to house its mentally ill inmates in less harsh conditions. The county is building a new unit – at a cost of $24 million – but it will replace a crumbling medical building. And the suicide watch cells on A-1 will remain.
The Eye is the online news site of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, based at WGBH Public Radio and Boston University. Jenifer McKim, Shaz Sajadi, Miranda Suarez, Debora Almeida, and Kaylie Piecuch contributed to this report. Chris Burrell can be reached at burrellc@bu.edu . For more on this article, go to eye.necir.org .
