To reach a suicide prevention hotline, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
The day before she was taken to the Knox County Jail last summer, Shannon Dickens threatened to kill herself.
While visiting her ex-boyfriend’s home in the town of Washington on Aug. 3, 2024 — in violation of previous bail conditions — Dickens fled into the woods with the man’s firearm, telling him she would “kill herself if he did not let her back in,” according to court records.
But officials minimized that statement when they booked Dickens into the jail the next day, and once she was locked up, it does not appear that she received the extra level of supervision that the facility requires for inmates who are at risk of suicide.
Those decisions now seem fateful.
Just over a month later, on Sept. 9, 2024, Dickens did kill herself, according to jail records that the Bangor Daily News obtained through Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.
The fact that Dickens wasn’t on suicide watch at the time of her death suggests that law enforcement officials could have done more to prevent it, according to experts who reviewed those records and members of Dickens’ own family.
It also shines a light on the difficulty that correctional facilities more generally face when trying to assess the suicide risk of new inmates, who may not be fully open about their own mental state in their intake questionnaires.
Paul Nestadt, an associate professor at the Center for Suicide Prevention at Johns Hopkins University, said suicide can be hard to predict with any person. But considering Dickens’ circumstances — especially her admission of suicidal thoughts before her arrest — the jail should have placed her on suicide watch, Nestadt said.
“It’s a missed opportunity to save a life,” he said.
Suicides in Maine jails
Across the U.S. an estimated 43 percent of people incarcerated in local jails and state prisons are diagnosed with a mental disorder, which can then be worsened by their incarceration. Maine requires that all county jails and state prisons have policies for training their employees on preventing suicide and recognizing its risk factors.
Nevertheless, 35 Maine jail inmates have died by suicide since 2010, according to state data the BDN obtained through a FOAA request.
Officials from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail in Rockland, did not respond to requests for comment about Dickens’ death, and the records they did release were partially redacted.
Generally speaking, it does not appear that her death was part of a larger pattern. Over the last 15 years, only one other inmate died by suicide at the Rockland jail, in 2017, according to state data.
Officials from the Maine Department of Corrections inspect jails every two years, and by coincidence, they visited Knox County’s while Dickens was there last August.
They reviewed the jail’s admissions documentation and determined that it was “complete,” according to their report. They found that the jail screened inmates for suicide risk factors and “provided an initial classification at admission.” The report also found that decisions about placing inmates on special status — such as suicide watch — have been made by the jail’s supervisory level staff.
Samuel Prawer, Maine DOC’s director of government affairs, declined to comment on Dickens’ case, but said that the department investigates every death at a county jail. The BDN has an outstanding FOAA request for a copy of any Maine DOC reports on Dickens’ case.
‘A pretty big red flag’
Dickens, who was 44 at the time of her death, came onto the radar of the county sheriff’s office on Aug. 3, 2024, when she violated previous bail conditions by visiting her ex-boyfriend’s home on Hopkins Road in Washington, according to an affidavit by Deputy Cooper Twitchell.
Dickens, who had been drinking, reportedly left the man’s house and fled into the woods, telling her ex that she would use his gun to “kill herself if he did not let her back in,” Twitchell said in the affidavit. The deputy then called dog handlers to track her, but they declined to come given that her “suicidal statement” and possession of a gun indicated a safety issue.
Another member of the sheriff’s office, Paul Spear, reiterated some of those details in an “Inmate Safekeeping Sheet” that was filed during Dickens’ booking. “She threatened to shot [sic] herself and may have later said [her ex-boyfriend’s name],” the official said in a handwritten response on the form.
This should have caused more alarm among jail officials, according to both Nestadt and Madalyn Wasilczuk, an assistant law professor at the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina who studies criminal justice issues. Nestadt’s research focuses on the epidemiology of suicide, and both he and Wasilczuk spoke at an April event focused on preventing suicide in U.S. jails in Washington, D.C.
“The fact that she said to the complainant in the case that she was going to shoot herself, to me, is a pretty big red flag,” Wasilczuk said.
But officials offered seemingly conflicting responses when they booked Dickens into the jail. On the same form in which Spear noted her threat to shoot herself, he also checked “No” on several questions, including whether she had made “any suicidal comments,” displayed “self-abusive behavior” or showed “signs of mental illness.”
Dickens was also apparently asked a set of screening questions, including whether she was suicidal. Her responses were redacted in the documents provided to the BDN, but an official wrote “No” in response to a question about whether he believed she was currently at risk of suicide.
Wasilczuk pointed to another circumstance of Dickens’ arrest that should have raised questions about her mental state: the fact that she received medical care at the Togus VA Medical Center around the time of her arrest.
Jail intake forms indicated that Dickens — who once served in the U.S. Air Force — had injuries on her feet from running through the woods that were treated at the hospital, but they do not indicate how she got to the facility or whether she received additional treatment. However, Dickens’ former attorney, Jane Langdon-Gray of Damariscotta, said in an interview in April that her client had been attempting to check herself in for mental health care at Togus.
A history of mental health problems
Two of Dickens’ sisters, Bre Brooks and Ivy Cowen, said she had a history of showing signs of bipolar disorder, which along with depression runs in their family. They weren’t sure if she had ever been diagnosed, and said Dickens had always refused medication for mental health problems. But as strong as Dickens was, they argued it should have been clear to officials that she was going through a mental health crisis at the time of her arrest.
Dickens was the eldest daughter in her family, taking care of her five younger siblings, Brooks said. She was strong, smart and a caregiver. She was married at one time, had two children and worked as a guard in the Air Force. Brooks said after giving birth to her eldest child, Dickens showed signs of depression and was honorably discharged to allow herself to spend more time with her son.
However, in the mid-2010s, Dickens and her husband went through a divorce. She moved to Pennsylvania, then Maine. Brooks said Dickens was a very generous person, but tended to get upset if her generosity wasn’t reciprocated by those she loved, which could have caused her issues with her relationship in Maine.
“She probably wouldn’t want anybody to know how bad she was hurting, and so I think that that’s probably what happened there,” Brooks said. Then she added, in reference to Dickens taking her life, “I mean, I didn’t know that she would do something like that.”
Brooks and Cowen argued that Dickens should have been put on suicide watch, or taken to a mental health care center instead of back to the jail.
“They took her back in there, but really, they should have taken her to a mental hospital,” Brooks said. “That’s where I would have taken somebody that was trying to kill themselves.”
The jail records provided to the BDN do not specifically outline what factors Knox County officials use to determine an inmate’s suicide risk, but it does not appear that Dickens was on suicide watch at the time of her death.
If she was, the jail’s policies would have required that she receive continuous one-on-one supervision and not be provided with any objects that could be used for self-harm. But records indicate that her cell was only being inspected on an hourly basis on the morning she died, and that she was given access to an object used in the suicide attempt.
After a correctional officer discovered that Dickens had attempted suicide, staff and first responders tried to resuscitate her before taking her to the nearby hospital, according to an incident report.
She was then put on a helicopter to Maine Medical Center in Portland, but it was too late.
Larger challenges
The fact that Dickens did end up taking her life illustrates broader challenges that Maine jails, which are often underfunded and understaffed, face in identifying the suicide risk among inmates.
Nestadt, the Johns Hopkins researcher, noted that screening questionnaires, like the one Dickens went through, can’t accurately predict the likelihood that someone would attempt suicide. He referenced a 2018 study by Alan Berman of 157 people who died by suicide that found two-thirds had denied suicidal ideation when last asked about it, and one-half of those patients had taken their own life within two days.
“It’s hard to identify a risk factor with real specificity or sensitivity,” Nestadt said.
Wasilczuk noted that law enforcement officials are typically not the best equipped to make that determination and could receive more training about it. In general, Wasilczuk said that talking with family members and other contacts can provide more context about a person’s mental health history.
She noted that checking on Dickens at random intervals — rather than hourly — would have helped protect her, since it would have made it harder for her to plan a suicide attempt.
Jails themselves are not generally places where people can get adequate mental health care, Wasilczuk said.
“In general, jail is a really bad place to try to treat mental illness or to deal with mental illness or substance disorders,” Wasilczuk said. “We know it’s not an effective place to do that, but we haven’t invested in the community mental health resources and other solutions to do things in other ways.”
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
