ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical, alternative analysis to state-defined ‘truths’ and policies around self-inflicted deaths in custody. It challenges the state’s perennial triple focus on: the pathological characteristics of prisoners who kill themselves in prisons; the abnormal characteristics of the state servants involved in these cases; or the bureaucratic inefficiency of individual prisons. The chapter critiques in detail this process of individualisation and argues for an alternative perspective which focuses on the prison context in which individuals choose to kill themselves. Finally, the chapter analyses what should be done.
