Suicide haunts jails across our country. Unfortunately, the Central Detention Facility, DC’s city jail, is no exception.
More than half of all prison and jail inmates in the United States have mental health problems, according to a 2006 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Another BJS report that year found that suicide caused 32.3 percent of deaths in local jails.
According to the DC Department of Corrections, two suicides were committed from 2009 to 2012 at the Central Detention Facility.