The “shock of confinement” makes the newly arrested more likely to commit suicide than the convicted.
One reason why jails have a higher suicide rate (46 per 100,000 in 2013) than prisons (15 PER 100,0001) 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.
The Marshall Project
But Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t new to prison nor was he the only person to fall from the heights. At least 10 billionaires have gone to jail, some for life. Bernie Madoff may be the most famous. The list of prominent American politicians serving sentences is extensive. Many heads of government have been imprisoned. But very few have committed suicide.
The most recent major political suicide was former Peru president Alan Garcia’s.
Former Peruvian President Alan García has died after shooting himself as police arrived at his home to arrest him over bribery allegations. …
Officers had been sent to arrest him at his home in the affluent Miraflores neighbourhood in connection with the allegations.
BBC
Interior Minister Carlos Morán told reporters that when police arrived, Mr García asked to make a phone call and went into a room and closed the door.
Minutes later, a shot rang out, Mr Morán said. Police forced the door open and found Mr García sitting on a chair with a bullet wound to his head.
To what extent were loose ends rather than the fear of confinement the driving motive?
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?