Attempted suicide prevented at Union County jail

Union County MS – An attempted suicide Saturday, June 1, at the Union County jail was prevented by an alert sheriff’s department detention officer.

Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards said, “An inmate attempted to hang himself, but a detention officer caught him in time and he is fine.”

The incident apparently occurred midday Saturday.

Suicides and attempted suicides in county jails are a major problem around the United States.

A report by the Marshall Project a few years ago said, “One reason why [county] jails have a higher suicide rate (46 per 100,000 in 2013) than prisons (15 per 100,000) is that people who enter a jail often face a first-time “shock of confinement”; they are stripped of their job, housing, and basic sense of normalcy. Many commit suicide before they have been convicted at all.”

According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report, those rates are seven times higher than for convicted inmates.

Staff of the Union County Sheriff’s Department are to be commended for being attentive to their work and thus preventing the tragic death of a troubled young person.