Suicides in jail

A really hot topic at the moment I'm fucked up with is the important frequency of suicides in jail since January 2009.
I think you heard about this without looking for informations about jail, but on our radio, sometimes, we hear it and we don't know anything else about it. Nobody explain the reason, the context... So people continue to not have interest about what is succeeding in jail. But If we want jail change, we have to demonstrate our interest and show that we are not bored with what happen everyday in our jail.

In jail, suicides used to be 6,4 time higher than in general population, but we are in a context of increase of twenty percent of suicides : since the beginning of the year, 13 persons commit suicide.
The problem is that the government doesn't want to admit that this increase is in link with conditions of life very hard to support.

Some of you would think that it's not a big problem : they all are criminal so if they commit suicide, they make some space! We hear that jail are overloaded, this is the solution!
I'm sorry to tell you that I don't agree with this point of view! I want to reflect about the jail's function : what is the goal of an imprisonment? If the death penalty has been abolished (in 1981 for the one's who didn't remember!) why prisoners would die in jail?

The main problem of our jail (in France) are the conditions of life : prisoners live in 9m² in one, two, three, and four sometimes. On one hand, lack of privacy, hygiene, people with they don't agree with... And on the other hand, relationship with guards who don't always respect them...
There would be lot of things to say about this, but I'm not able to talk about this in English (sorry!) and I think you know how can be the situation in jail, so I will limit my comments about suicides. But in fact it's hard to talk about that without talking about the context in jail because it help to understand why people want to commit suicide.

Some organizations as l' Observatoire International des Prisons want the government recognizes that this increase of suicides in jail is in link with the conditions we can qualify as dehumanizing : France is the European country where the suicides in jail are higher.
But we can read : " Le taux élevé de suicide en milieu pénitentiaire ne saurait refléter une prétendue dégradation des conditions de détention ou encore constituer une mesure objective du mal-être en prison, notamment en raison de la dimension essentiellement individuelle des actes suicidaires. Aucune corrélation n'a pu être établie entre les conditions d'incarcération et le taux de suicides." (ministère de la justice, 2004)

Also if the governement makes as a priority prevention of suicides, it doesn't take into account conditions of imprisonment! Furthermore, solutions suggested by the OIP are remained without answer : the governement refuses to consider people who work in jail and who know what would be good or no to reduce the suicides rate.
It also plans to educate better penitenciary employees and identify better people who could present a risk of suicide.

To conclude, we can imagine that jail must change to avoid suicides, and we know that the governement doesn't want that because the public opinion used to think that criminal have to remain in jail which makes them better : but people don't understant that it's not the quantity, it's the quality of imprisonment which is important!