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Portugal: Prison suicide and alarming prison death statistics

01 January 2005

Jorge Manuel da Conceição died in a punishment cell in Sintra prison on the night of 5-6 February 2005, after committing suicide by hanging himself. He was a drug addict, and his family argue that negligence by the prison services may have played an important part in his death. Conceição, who had escaped from Sintra prison years earlier and had been on the run for four years, was found and arrested by the Portuguese judicial police at the start of February. In the police station, he reportedly tried to jump out of a window, but was prevented from doing so. Once back in Sintra, he was placed in solitary confinement as a punishment. Solitary confinement has to be authorised by a doctor, and should have been refused if the doctor had been informed of the suicide attempt. A statement by the Associação Contra a Exclusão e pelo Desenvolvimento (ACED, Association Against Exclusion and for Development) criticised the state’s silence on this and similar cases “which allow an absurd impunity” to exist.

Official figures published on 2 December 2004 by the ministry in response to questions asked by the Green Party MP Isabel Castro indicate that there were 42 deaths in Portuguese prisons from 1 January to 31 May 2004. Thirty-five of these were recorded as suicides. Thirty deaths occurred in central and special prisons, whereas 12 took place in regional prisons. Twenty-eight of the deceased were in preventative detention, awaiting trial. The rate of deaths per 10,000 prisoners over this period was a 31.6. Council of Europe Statistics from 2001, relating to prison death figures from the year 2000, showed that the rate of prison deaths in Portugal per 10,000 prisoners (60) was only lower than the figures for Armenia (95), Moldova (93), Ukraine (74), Slovenia (68), and Northern Ireland (61).

Associação Contra a Exclusão e pelo Desenvolvimento website:
http://home.iscte.pt/~apad/aced01.html;
Prison death statistics charts:
http://home.iscte.pt/~apad/ACED/ficheiros/obituario.html