Shipman suicide ‘could not have been prevented’

The suicide of serial killer Harold Shipman “could not have been predicted or prevented”, an official report has stated.

However, the report by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Stephen Shaw criticised the way prison staff dealt with Shipman in the weeks prior to his death.

The former GP, who is believed to have killed over 200 of his patients during his career, hanged himself at Wakefield Prison on January 13, 2004, the day before his 58th birthday. He had served four years of 15 life sentences received for the murder of 15 patients.

Mr Shaw criticised the decision to withdraw Shipman’s privileges the month before he killed himself. The privileges were reduced from standard to basic because Shipman refused to participate in offending behaviour courses, in which prisoners are encouraged to discuss their crimes and admit their guilt. A prison doctor said that the loss of privileges had left Shipman “very emotional” and “close to tears”, because he was unable to contact his wife, Primrose.

The report, which contained 17 recommendations, was also highly critical of the prison’s record-keeping, which had made it impossible to establish the exact timing of events leading up to Shipman’s suicide.

Mr Shaw dismissed allegations that prison officers had taunted Shipman into committing suicide, but said that procedures for dealing with patients at risk of suicide had to be re-examined.

Mr Shaw said: “I am critical of the fact that staff at Wakefield do not appear to have been alerted to the man’s long-term risk of suicide, or what might finally trigger it.”

The report criticised prison staff for continuing to attempt to resuscitate Shipman for half an hour, despite “clear indications that the man was dead”. Staff were also criticised for failing to call an ambulance and the delay in contacting a doctor. The doctor arrived at the prison two hours after the discovery of Shipman’s body, but Mr Shaw said that he did not think the doctor would have been able to arrive any quicker, because he lived on the other side of Leeds.

Mr Shaw also said that it was “extremely regrettable” that the prisons did not have the correct next-of-kin details for Shipman, meaning that his wife discovered the news of his death from a relative who heard it on the radio.

(KMcA/SP)