Nine and one-half hours after being booked into the City of Mansfield Jail in Mansfield, Texas, 34-year-old Matthew Glen Wood was dead. He had hanged himself by the neck as other inmates in the cell were sleeping, and he died as a result of suicide a few hours later.

Suicide is a widespread problem in corrections units throughout the US. In Texas, a concern with regard to municipal jails like the City of Mansfield Jail is that there is no oversight in city jails. The city jails in Texas are completely unregulated, unlike county jails in Texas. All county jails in the state are held accountable to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards for maintaining minimum jail standards.

County jails in the state are subject to a section of the guidelines of operation dedicated to suicide prevention. If a jail is discovered to be non-compliant, TCJS applies additional scrutiny and, in some circumstances, works with the jail to bring things up to code. Although many different areas of jail operations are covered in the TCJS guidelines, those related to suicide prevention are recognized as crucial matters.

Suicide is widely known to be a threat to inmates in all correctional facilities, including unregulated city jails. The National Institute of Corrections (NICIC) has prepared a report addressing the issue of suicide. According to their records, inmate suicides are consistently much higher than the national average is for suicide among those who are not incarcerated. The resource prepared by NICIC states that its purpose is to provide ways that can be implemented to halt the alarming increase in custodial suicide rates.

Learn more in this continuing series.

All posts are provided on this site to provide potentially helpful resources for inmates and former inmates of Texas jails. There is never an intent on this website to imply that wrongs have occurred on the part of persons or entities.

–Guest Contributor