Title: Suicide and Suicide Methods in Prison: Inside Prison
Headings: Suicide Methods in Prison
Suicide Methods in Prison
Strangulation
Drug overdoses
Self-inflicted Wounds
Warning Signs

Content: Bureau of Prisons
Asphyxiation has also been achieved by using a plastic bag to cut off air circulation. In July 2002, Australian inmate Bradley William Rapley affixed a plastic "property bag," used for holding cigarettes, around his neck with blankets and towel fragments. Others, such as a suicide in Colonie, NY, used their prison socks to tighten the same sort of bag. A Belfast prisoner in September of 2005 confounded experts by employing a "bizarre" series of knots to secure a plastic bag around his head and successfully commit suicide. John McGrath made 6 knots from laces, shirts, and towels, covered his mouth with a plastic bag, and stuffed bits and pieces of the bag up his nose. Knot expert Michael Lucas said that McGrath had likely prepared the knots in advance, using "granny knots with a left twist," and doing them in proper sequence (1 September 2005 Belfast News Letter). Drug overdoses
Drugs are the next most common method of killing oneself. An inmate at Kingston Penitentiary once collected individual doses of carbon tetrachloride (cleaning fluid) on a regular basis from offices for two years as a prison office cleaner, so that he would finally have enough to damage his kidneys beyond repair and kill himself. Rubbing alcohol (methylated alcohol) has also been used in the past, bought from messengers and other inmate cleaners. A fatal methyl alcohol overdose is usually preceded by intense periods of vomiting, blurred vision, muscle spasms, and acute pain.