KatyK I'm so sorry to learn about your brother. Prison is the most inhumane environment, despite what is done for rehabilitation and basic care of prisoners.
Before retiring, one of my responsibilities was training staff about suicide and self harm in probation, so I spent a lot of time in prisons, learning how Safer Custody Officers try to keep prisoners safe, how they assess risk of harm, and how they meet to discuss 'near misses' in order to get better at keeping prisoners safe. The inventiveness of prisoners who intend to commit suicide by finding elaborate methods was detailed and shown to every prison officer in their training, so they'd be on high alert. Every prisoner is checked as they arrive in reception to determine whether they want to harm themselves, then routinely from then on. The ACCT (Assessment, Care in Custody, and Teamwork) is started and reviewed, and it involves every person involved with the prisoner and should bring in family, too. It isn't closed as long as there is a risk. It's such a useful, but time-consuming, process - suicides plummeted year on year when ACCT was introduced. Same in probation - it was successful. It was good to see that people collaborating to keep prisoners safe was actually showing it could be done.
It seems now, a few years on, that prisons can't cope. Chris Grayling has piled more responsibilities onto prison staff and imposed more cuts. The Prison and Probation Ombudsman investigates every death and makes recommendations which have to be carried out across the board, from Governor One down to new prison staff. The Prison and Probation Ombudsman's website carries every inquiry and its findings, if anyone wants to find out more. Inquiries can take a year for their findings to be published - coroners use their reports when looking into every death.
Below are two reports from websites that give useful information - the Prison and Probation Ombudsman and Inside Time. I hate to see phrases like 'learning lessons' - exactly when will those lessons be learned - in fact, by bringing in the ACCT process, it was believed lessons actually had been learned? And I don't like the term 'commit suicide' - suicide is not a crime - it's a crime that prisoners are not kept safe, and the issue of corporate manslaughter has been raised periodically. Perhaps one day a Home Secretary, Home Office Minister and prison governor might find themselves being charged with this crime.
www.ppo.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/PPO-annual-report-2013-14-news-release.pdf
www.insidetime.co.uk/articleview.asp?a=1850&c=learning_lessons_to_reduce_suicides_in_prison