Suicides in state prisons doubled last year, report finds
/
New data from the Office of Mental Health shows that the number of self-harm incidents and deaths by suicide increased in 2024. AP file photo by Mark Lennihan
By Noah Powelson
Suicides in prisons more than doubled in 2024 compared to the previous year, new data obtained from the New York State Office of Mental Health shows.
The Correctional Association of New York, otherwise known as CANY released a dashboard of data assembled from OMH on Tuesday, which paints a grim picture of a rising mental health crisis in state prisons. Data in the dashboard includes monthly facility caseload and program census reports in each correctional facility, as well as information about self-harm incidents, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide that occur in these facilities.
In 2024, 25 people died by suicide in New York State prisons, a 108 percent increase from 2023 when 12 people died by suicide. There was an average of 13 suicides annually between 2004 and 2024, according to the data.
Additionally, despite prison populations decreasing overall, suicide rates are rising. From 2013 to 2024, the suicide rate in prisons went from 0.13 per 1,000 people to 0.24 per 1000 people. This represents a 208 percent increase despite the prison population dropping from roughly 54,000 to around 36,000 in the same time period.
There were fewer suicide attempts overall in 2024 compared to 2023, the data shows, but the number of self-harm incidents has increased by about 8 percent in the same time.
“CANY’s new dashboard provides visibility into yet another crisis in New York’s prisons: a dramatic increase in suicides coupled with an increasing share of incarcerated people on mental health caseloads,” Jennifer Scaife, executive director of CANY, said in a statement. “The purpose of this dashboard is to provide greater transparency into this crisis so that action can be taken to reduce risk and improve outcomes.”
CANY also noted that data on the dashboard does not exactly align with the numbers the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision published in their unusual incident report. DOCCS did not defer to OMH’s self-harm and suicide incident classification system until 2018, and DOCCS does not also consistently report incidents of self-injury that are non-suicidal in nature while OMH does.
As a result, OMH may report a higher number of self-injury incidents than DOCCS.
The dashboard also shows that cases of mental illness are rising overall in general. OMH reported the percentage of incarcerated people on the OMH caseload increased from 26 percent in 2022 to 29 percent in 2025, according to CANY.
Women prisoners also show higher rates of mental illness, and three women prisons report that over half of their women population suffers from a mental illness. Those three correctional facilities are Bedford Hills with 71 percent, Albion with 70 percent and Taconic with 60 percent of their population on the OMH caseload.
