Inmate suicide brings criticism about health services

Michael Caputo, 59, was found on the floor of his cell with a plastic bag over his head on Monday at around 1 a.m. in the medium security portion of the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, officials said. He was pronounced dead at 5:15 p.m. at Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton.

Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction, said Caputo was found by a guard making rounds that morning. The Plymouth district attorney’s office is investigating Caputo’s death.

Caputo had been serving life without parole since 1991 for first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of his estranged wife and her mother in Jamaica Plain. He was being housed in the general population in an individual cell, Wiffin said.

“The story in my mind is the recent reductions in mental health staff. The department is not equipped to deal with the influx of mentally ill prisoners,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, which advocates on behalf of inmates for better medical and mental health care. “For one, Michael was a human being, and second, there is no death penalty in Massachusetts, so he was sentenced to prison for his natural life.’’

The rate of inmate suicide in Massachusetts is more than three times higher than the national average, Walker said. There were three inmate suicides last year, and there have been four so far in 2010, she said.

“Each incident is specific to the individual,’’ Wiffin said about the suicide rate. “You can’t eliminate risk, but you try and manage the risk.’’

A 2007 Globe Spotlight Team report highlighted a story of deepening mental illness and misery behind the walls of the state’s prisons, as part of a prison culture that included botched background screenings, missing mental health records, and skipped security rounds.

After a review of suicide prevention and mental health care efforts, the number of inmate suicides dropped from seven in 2007 to zero in 2008, but Walker said the decision to lay off 40 mental health staff last spring contributed to the increase in inmate deaths.

In another recent case, on the morning of March 20, Steven Carey, 62, a Chicopee man who had been in prison since 1976 for murdering a real estate agent, was found hanged in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

John M. Guilfoil can be reached at jguilfoil@globe.com