77% of jail suicides are people who haven't been convicted of anything

People awaiting trial account for 77% of all jail suicides, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Between 2008 and 2019, over 2,000 people died by suicide in the 523 largest US jails, and 1,500 of those deaths were among individuals in pretrial detention or awaiting indictment. More than 40% of all jail deaths occur within the first week of incarceration. People held pretrial are six times more likely to die by suicide than people who have been convicted and sentenced. About 26% of people in jail meet criteria for serious psychological distress, compared to 5% in the general population, yet mental healthcare in jails is often nonexistent or severely inadequate. The person who dies may have been arrested for a misdemeanor, may have been unable to post $500 bail, and may have been entirely innocent. They are placed in an environment designed for punishment, not care, with no mental health screening, no crisis intervention, and no continuity of any psychiatric medication they were taking on the outside. This persists because jails are funded and operated as holding facilities, not healthcare facilities. County budgets allocate funds for corrections officers, not psychiatrists. There is no federal mandate for mental health standards in local jails, and jail administrators face no legal consequences for failing to provide mental health care to pretrial detainees.