Self-Harm in Irish Prisons 2020/2021 Report

13th September 2024

The Irish Prison Service has published Self-harm in Irish Prisons – Fourth report from the Self-Harm Assessment and Data Analysis (SADA) Project (2020-2021). The report includes data on recorded episodes of self-harm that occurred in prison during the years 2020 and 2021. The SADA project was developed in 2016 by the Irish Prison Service, in collaboration with the HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention and the National Suicide Research Foundation. The reports, which are published for each year, inform and update the Irish Prison Service in response to maintaining safer prisons.

The publication of this report marks the fourth annual report, but the fifth year of data, as this report covers both the 2020 and 2021 calendar years.

This is the first report in the SADA series to cover the pandemic period. In 2021, following the publication of the 2019 SADA report, IPRT called for the urgent publication of the report and data for 2020 to inform evidence-based decision-making on pandemic-related restrictions in prisons. However, this data remained unpublished until September 2024. While other jurisdictions were able to publicly and transparently assess the impact of lockdowns and pandemic restrictions in prisons on self-harm rates, this was not known in Ireland. (For example, Safety in Custody Statistics were regularly published for prisons in England and Wales.) However, Thematic Inspection reports by the Office of the Inspector of Prisons provided some qualitative insights.

In total, the annual rate of self-harm in 2020, the first year of pandemic restrictions, and the year in which they were arguably the most restrictive, rose from 2.7 per 100 in 2019 to 3.6 per 100 in 2020. This represents a 33 per cent increase in the rate in 2020 compared to 2019. This is the biggest annual year-on-year increase in recorded rates since the commencement of the SADA series. However, this fell again to 2.6 per 100 in 2021. Despite the significant increase in recorded self-harm rates during 2020, however, the report notes: “The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented measures being implemented in prisons, the outcomes of this report suggest that infection control methods did not lead to an increase in self-harm, however the decrease in the prison population should be considered.”

The comparatively higher rates of recorded self-harm among female prisoners (compared to males) and those on remand (compared to sentenced prisoners), as were previously observed in earlier SADA reports, continued during both 2020 and 2021. However, the margin between the recorded self-harm rates of those on remand compared to those under sentence decreased in both 2020 and 2021, as compared to 2019.

Key findings:

• There were 225 recorded episodes of self-harm involving 126 individuals in 2020 and 196 recorded episodes involving 91 individuals in 2021. Thus, the number of recorded self-harm episodes was 10.8% higher in 2020 than in 2019, but 12.9% lower in 2021 than in 2020.
• The annual person-based rate of self-harm in 2020 (3.6 per 100) was significantly higher than the rate recorded in 2019 (2.7 per 100). However, the rate for 2021 (2.6 per 100), was significantly lower (27.8%) than the rate recorded in 2020, and was similar to that recorded in 2019, pre-pandemic (2.7 per 100).
• Thirty-one female prisoners engaged in recorded self-harm in 2020 and fourteen in 2021, equating to rates of 36.9 per 100 in 2020 and 15.6 per 100 in 2021, respectively. This compares to 19.8 per 100 in 2019.
• The rate of self-harm was two times higher among prisoners on remand than those sentenced in 2020 (3.0. versus 1.5 per 100) and 2021 (3.1 versus 1.5 per 100). This compares favourably to the recorded rates in 2019 (5.7 versus 2.3 per 100).
• The rate of repeated self-harm among male prisoners was 22.1% in 2020 (n=21 people) compared with 35.5% of female prisoners (n=11 people); while 40.3% of male prisoners repeated self-harm in 2021 (n=31 people) compared with 57.1% of female prisoners (n=8 people).
• Specific factors that may contribute to self-harm were noted to include: procedural issues (such as issues related to transfer, protection, denial of TR), environmental issues (such as type of cell, reduced access to regime), and relational issues (difficulties with significant others, difficulties with other prisoners, death or anniversary of someone close, relationship difficulties with staff).

Read the Fourth report from the Self-Harm Assessment and Data Analysis (SADA) Project (2020-2021) on the Irish Prison Service website.

Relevant helplines and websites:

Text About It: Text HELLO to 50808; Samaritans: free phone 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie; Childline: 1800 66 66 66; Aware: www.aware.ie; HSE Mental Health: www.yourmentalhealth.ie; spunout: www.spunout.ie.