Court Opinion

ID: 9864018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 11:59:05.964921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:58.016020
License: Public Domain

BERNICE BOUIE DONALD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the panel’s analysis and outcome. I write separately to note the troubling statistics surrounding suicides in the Macomb County Jail.
The Macomb County Jail has a capacity of 1,238 inmates and processes about 19,-000 inmates annually.7 Macomb County Sheriffs Office Annual Report 11 (2012). In the year surrounding Prochnow’s August 2011 suicide, five Macomb County Jail inmates (including Prochnow) committed suicide. Only six percent of U.S. jails reported two or more deaths by any cause in 2011; eighty-one percent of jails reported no deaths. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 242186, Mortality Rates in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000-2011 1. In Michigan, only sixteen percent of jails reported one or more inmate deaths by any cause. Id. at 18. Macomb County Jail’s five suicides alone accounted for nearly twenty percent of Michigan’s twenty-four total reported jail inmate deaths by any cause in 2011, id. at 15, despite the fact that the Jail processed only about eight percent of the state’s total annual jail inmates and held only seven percent of the state’s jail inmates at any one time, see supra n. 1. This case is not the first time that this Court has taken notice of Macomb County Jail’s high suicide rate. In Crocker v. County of Macomb, this Court noted that Crocker’s June 2001 suicide was also the fifth suicide at the Jail in less than one year. 119 Fed.Appx. 718, 721 (6th Cir.2005).
Macomb County Jail’s disturbing suicide rate is a microcosm of the larger jail-suicide problem, which accounted for thirty-five percent of all jail deaths in the U.S. in 2011. Id. at 7. Our decision cites no less than nine prisoner-suicide cases, most of which originate in Michigan. See Galloway v. Anuszkiewicz, 518 Fed.Appx. 330 (6th Cir.2013); Jerauld v. Carl, 405 Fed.Appx. 970 (6th Cir.2010); Cooper v. Cnty. of Washtenaw, 222 Fed.Appx. 459, 470 (6th Cir.2007); Perez v. Oakland Cnty., 466 F.3d 416 (6th Cir.2006); Linden v. Washtenaw Cnty., 167 Fed.Appx. 410 (6th Cir. 2006); Schultz v. Sillman, 148 Fed.Appx. 396, 401-03 (6th Cir.2005); Gray v. City of Detroit, 399 F.3d 612 (6th Cir.2005); Com-stock v. McCrary, 273 F.3d 693 (6th Cir. 2001); Barber v. City of Salem, 953 F.2d 232 (6th Cir.1992). Our decision could have cited two more cases, both of which occurred prior to Prochnow’s suicide, where Macomb County itself was before this Court or district courts in this Circuit as a defendant in an inmate-suicide action. *314See Crocker, 119 Fed.Appx. 718; House v. Cnty. of Macomb, 303 F.Supp.2d 850 (E.D.Mich.2004).
Most of these cases, like the one before us, deal with the suicide of inmates who had a known history of mental illness and suicidal tendencies. And in those cases, like this one, this Court reached the conclusion, first put forward in Danese v. Asman, 875 F.2d 1239 (6th Cir.1989), that there is no recognized constitutional right to be properly screened for suicide risk. Thus, no official or municipality can be held liable under § 1983 for inmate suicides where there has been improper screening or no screening. See Barber, 953 F.2d at 237-38.
And yet the suicides keep happening. How many times should this question come before this Court before the need for adequate suicide precautions for mentally-ill inmates becomes “clearly established law” for which officials can be held accountable? Id. at 236. How many times should Macomb County come before this Court before “the need for better training [becomes] so obvious” that it should be held liable? Id. While current law offers no refuge for Grabow, the time may come for this Court to rethink what constitutional protections are available to mentally ill, potentially suicidal inmates and what sort of liability may be imposed on defendants like Macomb County, where these suicides continue to occur at an alarming rate.

. On average, the total Michigan jail population per day in 2011 was 16, 541. Mortality Rates in Local Jails and State Prisons 17. The total annual Michigan jail population for 2010 was 219,266. JPIS Report from Michigan Department of Corrections, Office of Community Corrections 84 (2010).