By Jeremy Burnham
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Wash.
SEATTLE — Inmates in Washington’s prison system now have an additional resource if they are experiencing suicidal thoughts.
Elisabeth Kingsbury, the interim director of Washington’s Office of the Corrections Ombuds (OCO), said a crisis hotline is now available to inmates.
“After extensive discussions, (the Department of Corrections) agreed to implement OCO’s recommendation related to making the 988-crisis line accessible at all facilities. We issued the recommendation officially in 2024,” she said.
The change comes in the wake of three inmates — Mitch Hemphill, Everette D. Alonge and Michael R. Giordano — who died by suicide within six days at the Washington State Penitentiary in June 2023.
At the time, officials from the Ombuds office said the department would recommend ways to support suicidal inmates.
“Communicating suicidality or extreme feelings can be difficult for people in any setting,” Kingsbury said. “For people in prison, the stakes are often higher. Prison staff or other incarcerated people might overhear this private information, or the person may be moved to a suicide watch area, the conditions of which are often akin to solitary confinement.”
Kingsbury said staffing issues can also prevent inmates from getting needed help.
“Prison mental health staff are often not available after business hours,” she said. “The OCO recognized that providing a way for people to talk with a trained crisis counselor anonymously, with reduced potential for suicide watch placement, and after hours could be helpful in reducing suicide attempts and deaths. It could also provide an outlet for people to process feelings before they rise to crisis levels. At that point, OCO began connecting with 988 experts to discuss possibilities.”
Jeffrey McKee, an inmate at Washington State Penitentiary, said he heard on Friday, Oct. 24, about the availability of the 988-crisis line.
“I was ecstatic about it,” McKee said in a phone interview. “Prisoners need a safe space to express their feelings without fear of punishment” from authorities.
McKee said that about three years ago, he was experiencing a rough time and enduring a lot of stress. He said he needed an outlet to talk about his thoughts, so he shared those thoughts with the person in charge of dispensing medication to inmates.
“I like talking through things, and I needed to get things off my chest,” he said, recalling that a nearby prison guard overheard the conversation.
When he returned to his cell, officials told him he would be confined to his cell.
“I felt punished,” he said, “and it escalated.”
McKee rebelled and started to kick on his cell door. He was later cited for an infraction, accusing him of interfering with a staff member. The infraction was later dropped.
He said the crisis line will serve as a valuable asset for inmates who need help. He said it might have helped the three men who died in June 2023 .
“Having it (the crisis line) available to them would have definitely been a tool,” McKee said, explaining that prisoners watch out for each other, looking for weird behavior, signs of depression or talk of wanting to hurt themselves.
McKee said he didn’t know whether officials will listen or record the conversations on the hotline — a routine practice in outgoing phone calls made by prisoners.
He tested the crisis line on the day he heard about it. A recording said the call would not be monitored.
However, McKee said, afterward his call, a prison official asked him whether he made the call on the crisis line.
“So, there is probably some record of who is using it,” he said.
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