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September 21, 2007
Deaths in Prison
To be honest, this number really rather surprises me:
There were around 600 deaths in custody in England and Wales last year, according to a report published today.
The figure, calculated by the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody, covers deaths in prisons, police cells, secure hospitals and young offender institutions and includes those from natural causes, suicides and murders.
Around 400 of the deaths were due to natural causes and 200 were self-inflicted, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said.
As Mark Wadsworth points out, this is actually a lower death rate (although a vastly higher suicide one) than the general population. (And God, doesn't "Ministry of Justice" grate? We some Third World banana republic or something?)
The thing is, I amazed at how high that rate of death by natural causes is. I thought we let prisoners out when they were near death? You know, go home to die stuff?
September 21, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
Ta muchly for link.
Posted by: Mark Wadsworth | Sep 21, 2007 10:52:34 AM
I'm saddened by how low the rate is. It shows that we are not jailing people for long enough, and that prisons are insufficiently harsh.
Posted by: Ed | Sep 21, 2007 1:12:07 PM
Presumably lower death rate is because the outside world has a higher proportion of old biddies popping their clogs all over the place.
Posted by: JH | Sep 21, 2007 1:26:21 PM
"We some Third World banana republic or something?"
Yes!
Posted by: P. Spence | Sep 21, 2007 1:38:34 PM
Most prisoners are under 30. Those that are in for whole life seem to outlive their class-mates on the outside - e.g. Harry Roberts.
Ian Brady is about 64 isn't he?
Posted by: dave heasman | Sep 22, 2007 12:41:12 AM
