Arturo Gomez was taken into custody by the La Joya Police Department on a charge of public intoxication and booked into La Joya City Jail on April 17, 2022. Shortly after arriving at the jail, he was discovered nonresponsive. Attempts were made to revive him and he was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, but he was pronounced dead on April 18 approximately 4 hours after arriving at the La Joya jail.

Custodial Suicide Prevention Training

All staff members in local jails must be trained in suicide prevention, at least to learn basics. There are many risk factors to custodial suicide, and an overall concept is that suicide can happen with any inmate at any given time. When suicides occur, only about half occur in areas designated for at-risk inmates.

Attitudes and misunderstandings can have an effect on the actions taken with regard to preventing inmate suicide. For instance, a myth about suicide is that you can increase the likelihood of suicide in a particular person by simply bringing it up.

Another major issue in jails is that inmates often intentionally hide the fact that they are suicidal. The following are some of the possible reasons:

• The perception of punitive aspects of being placed in at-risk status.
• When questions are asked, there may be a lack of privacy and desired discretion.
• An inmate may desire to stop any efforts to end his or her life.
• There may be fears about being ostracized or ridiculed by other inmates.

Learn more information in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this series.

This website seeks to help inmates detained now or previously in a Texas county jail, and making accusations against persons or entities is never intended.

–Guest Contributor