By Jessica Miller
The Salt Lake Tribune
UTAH COUNTY, Utah — After a three-day stint in the Utah County jail in 2010, Cory Jex told his mom he’d never be behind bars again.
“He said he’d never go back because he had so much anxiety,” his mother, Michelle Jex, said. “He wasn’t very fond of it."But the next year, Cory Jex, then 22, found himself once more in the Spanish Fork facility after he violated probation when he tested positive for opiates and admitted to his probation officer that he had used heroin.
He was supposed to spend only a couple of days in the jail, Michelle Jex said. While he was gone, she went to his bedroom in their Springville home to tidy up and change the bed sheets. That way he’d have a fresh start — another new beginning — when he came home.
But on March 10, 2011, while inmates in Cory Jex’s pod went to the cafeteria for a meal, he stayed behind. A jail worker later found that he had hanged himself from a shower head. He was on life support for three days before he died.
“I feel guilty,” Michelle Jex said recently of her son’s death. “I knew he had suicidal thoughts before, but I had no fear [about him going to jail.]”
Cory Jex is just one of the hundreds of Utah inmates in recent years that have attempted suicide while being held at county jails — and one of more than a dozen who were successful.
Records show that suicides and suicide attempts are rising in some Utah jails, but officials question whether the increase is merely a reflection of the upward trend that is occurring in society in general. Theysay they are doing all they can to prevent harm coming to those under their care — a population that tends to be highly unstable, susceptible to depression and are placed in a new environment that can be cramped, noisy and frightening.
Full story: Suicide a rising concern in some Utah jails