Dan Neville
Question:481 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of suicides and attempted suicides in prisons here in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. [17182/04]
View answerTuesday, 15 June 2004
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Written answers
All deaths in prison custody are the subject of a Garda investigation and an inquest held in a coroner's court. The cause of death is determined by a jury on the basis of the information presented to the court. The number of deaths in prison custody which are attributed to suicide are as follows: 2000, three; 2001, one; 2002, four; and 2003, two. Inquest verdicts are pending in respect of one such death in 2002 and two deaths in 2003, but the apparent cause of death indicates that suicide was the possible intention in the cases.
Attempted suicide is also described as parasuicide. Parasuicide is any non-fatal act which an individual deliberately undertakes knowing that it may cause them physical harm or even death. Accurate historical statistical data on such incidences is not readily available and would require extensive searches of individual files and records. Such incidents have proven difficult to categorise as self-harm or attempted suicide because a judgement on intent is required from the compiler of the statistics.
The National Suicide Research Foundation established the national parasuicide registry in 2000 as a national monitoring system for the occurrence of parasuicide. The foundation defines parasuicide as any non-fatal act which an individual deliberately undertakes knowing or believing that it may cause them physical harm or even death. It includes acts involving varying levels of suicidal intent including definite attempts at suicide and acts where the individual had no intention of dying. The Prison Service agreed with the foundation in 2001 that the registry should include prisons and places of detention in its statistics and the foundation undertook to compile the statistics from records kept within each prison or place of detention. The foundation included a chapter on prisons and places of detention in its 2002 annual report, which was published in late 2003. It recorded 144 episodes of parasuicide in prisons and places of detention in 2002.
The Prison Service has been moving in recent years towards centralised record systems based on the use of information technology. Considerable progress has already been made in this area and further work is under way at present. The figures provided by the Prison Service relate to non-fatal acts undertaken by a prisoner knowing that they may cause physical harm or even death. The numbers of incidences of serious self-harm recorded by the Prison Service in prisons and places of detention for the specified periods are as follows: 2000, 73; 2001, 73; 2002, 93; and 2003, 112. The divergence between the figures given by the Prison Service and the national parasuicide registry for 2002 may be explained by the judgment on intent of the individual compiler of the figures in each prison and place of detention.