"On April 14, Rocha's body was discovered hanging in her 10-by-15-foot cell, in the psych ward at CIW, the noose around her neck fashioned from a bedsheet and tied around a heating vent. There was no suicide note. Rocha's parole hearing had been scheduled for the next day."

"Texas county jails have seen an almost 60 percent decrease in suicides from last year."

"Presents national and state-level data on the number of inmate deaths that occurred in local jails and state prisons, the distribution of deaths across jails, and the aggregate count of deaths in federal prisons. The report presents annual counts and 14-year trends between 2000 and 2013 in deaths in custody.

"Taking each suicide threat as the real thing ensures that you're always ready for when an inmate actually attempts suicide and prevent losing a life."

"We’ll never know exactly what happened to Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old black woman who police said was found hanged to death in her Texas jail cell last week following her arrest after a traffic stop. Even though the last two days’ worth of news - the official autopsy, the fact that Bland had told prison officials she had attempted suicide earlier this year, and a video in which she had recounted her struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder - do point to suicide, there’s still a formal investigation to be done.

"If it turns out Bland did commit suicide, experts in jail mortality say it wouldn't be as surprising as her family believes. The grim reality is that jails have high suicide rates - higher than prisons. Part of the reason, says corrections expert and consultant Steve J. Martin, is what he calls the "shock of confinement." Jails often house people who've never been in serious legal trouble before, and it can have a traumatic effect on them."

"At this unique moment when the public is actually paying attention to local jails, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a new report based on its Death in Custody Reporting Program showing that the number of people who died while under custody of state prisons and local jails increased for a third consecutive year and, especially troubling, that suicide in jails is a national crisis"

"One reason why 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 BJS report, those rates are seven times higher than for convicted inmates."

"Some people think that solitary confinement is basically just spending some alone time," one former prisoner says. "It's not. It's like being buried alive."

"Should convicted prisoners facing life behind bars get the right to die on the grounds of their tortured existence? Sometimes, says a doctor who has experienced the treatment of inmates who have attempted suicide."