Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Obviously a biased source, but his brother does not thing it was suicide either. That's to say he's right. People do commit suicide in jail or prison, but it does seem weird that a high value prisoner was not properly monitored for suicide-watch. Technically he was, but the Cameras were not working and the guys watching him were very lackadaisical about it.

View on HN

> and the guys watching him were very lackadaisical about it.

Anyone who knows anything at all about suicide prevention is unsurprised by this. We know that observation does not work because staff cannot maintain it. This is true whether it's 15 minute obs, 5 minute obs, permanent line of sight obs, arms length obs, two to one arms length obs: they do not work.

There are countless examples of staff in hospital, on duty, doing obs, knowing their patient is at increased risk of suicide, falling asleep.

The different between those countless examples and Epstein’e case is that the latter involves perhaps the single most internationally famous and famously at-risk prisoner in human history — so while taking the standard statistics into account is good practice, it’s a bit like using the historical weather patterns to argue against the existence of a currently-happening hurricane.

What a claim. In all of human history? What about Cleopatra or Napoleon?

The word “perhaps” allows for alternate opinions :). But I must say, both Cleopatra and Napoleon existing in a pre social media world suggests their infamy did not spread as far, and neither Napoleon nor Cleopatra had the ability to expose leaders around the world from within their jail cells — thus the “at-risk”.

But I’m curious to hear who you would suggest instead. One of those two? Someone else?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com