Preventing prison suicide in Canada
This paper analyses how prison suicide became a public issue in the late 1970s and early 1980s and discusses the expertise and kinds of actions that originated from the Correctional Service of Canada. The origin of these reforms is shown to be the wider context of prison transformations, such as the development of inmates’ rights, the opening of prisons to outside experts, particularly doctors, and the restructuring of the disciplinary function of the institution. The strongest suicide prevention measures, while only sketched out in the early 1980s, were already clearly focused on issues such as collecting and sharing information and classifying, assigning, and supervising suicidal inmates.