Suicidogenic prison device in reception: An educational perspective on suicide risk containment

Suicide prevention in prison settings reveals structural limitations, traceable to the prisonisation’ effects and to the dominance of a clinical-diagnostic paradigm focused on identifying individual vulnerabilities. This article proposes a reconceptualisation of suicide in prison, framing it as a possible outcome of the prisonisation process, meant as a multilayered institutional device shaping educational processes, sense-making, the identity reorganisation of inmates from the outset. From an andragogical perspective, reception for newcomers is analysed as an educational device potentially seen as a suicidogenic interaction: a relational process capable of generating or intensifying conditions of suicide risk while simultaneously hindering prevention. During reception informal learning are embedded in practices, routines, relational dynamics of the total institution, potentially orienting individuals toward self-annihilative outcomes. Prisonisation is reinterpreted as a process that may reinforce – or, if intentionally governed, counteract – the prison’s suicidogenic conditions, requiring cultural, professional, organisational interventions capable of transforming reception into an intentional learning space