The trivial most often sends prisoners over the edge

domestic incidents which most of us would consider trivial.

In a recent interview with The Herald, the prisoner added that he had

seen men brought to the edge by the threat of Aids, knowing that they

had contracted HIV inside prison, knowing that they had given themselves

a death sentence, and that it was their own fault.

Suicide is, after all, not an easy act to commit. In a strange way, it

requires courage of a high order. Ernest Hemingway, the American author

who later shot himself after becoming obsessed with the subject, said,

memorably, that it was the only act that a man truly committed alone.

Jail reduces personality, like water dripping on a stone. The trivia

of much of daily life, of the endless sea of rules governing every

sphere of activity breeds a deep frustration.

It can heighten a man's isolation; even when he is living in the

claustrophobic, overcrowded beehive of a Victorian prison such as Winson

Green or Durham, or Perth or Barlinnie, he can become deeply,

irretrievably introverted, and the crunch is that he may not display any

outside symptoms which would allow a concerned prison officer to spot

him as a suicide risk.

Many criminals are, after all, adept at concealing emotions, practised

at prevarication, experts at emotional chess. There is a perfect example

here in Scotland of that later character trait and it concerns Thomas

McCulloch, who tried to kill a Dumbartonshire hotel manageress and

received a life sentence.

It was while being detained for treatment at the State Hospital in

Carstairs in 1976 that he and his accomplice, Robert Mone -- who was

jailed for life for murdering a Dundee school teacher in front of her

class -- escaped from the State hospital in a bloody rampage which

scarred Scottish society as well as the justice system.

Recaptured after killing a fellow patient, a male nurse, and a

policeman, the two are said to be the only men in Scotland's prisons who

are guaranteed what the English call a full life tariff. McCulloch, 45,

is widely regarded as our most dangerous prisoner (as well as the most

costly) and it is for that reason -- the potential danger to others, not

because he may be suicidal -- that he is guarded day and night in

Peterhead Prison by three officers.

However, McCulloch plays subtle mind games with the men detailed to

watch him. Outwardly normal all the time, he has been known to remark

casually to the officers that the reason there are three of them is that

the authorities know that, if there were only two, he could kill them.

He sows the seeds of doubt in the mind of his jailers, who know that,

after his mother died, McCulloch said he would like to kill again. They

can never relax.

Some murderers facing enormously long prison stretches find ways of

coming to terms with the endless parade of identical days.

Howard Wilson is a former policeman convicted of murdering two police

officers and crippling another in Allison Street, in Glasgow's

Govanhill, after a bank raid. His 25-year minimum -- the sentence he had

to complete even before the parole process was allowed to begin, is now

up. He recently told The Herald that he had received good advice from

older cons in Peterhead in the early days.

Look forward to the next football match on the radio, look forward to

fish and chips -- everyone's favourite in Peterhead Prison -- on a

Wednesday, look forward to your next visit but, under no circumstances,

look further ahead.

It was a cliche, he said, but the advice was to do the sentence in

small chunks -- if necessary, one day at a time. In another sense, the

sheer bloody mindedness of the regime helped him to put thoughts of

suicide from his mind.

He had always been a positive, strong personality and the staff at

Peterhead hated everyone impartially in those rough, tough days 25 years

ago. It was country boys from Buchan versus city slickers from Glasgow.

The late Paddy Meehan talked of the same scenario, and how the sheer,

bloody anger which it generated drove out any thoughts of ending it all.

Wilson remembers being locked in the special cell at Barlinnie, then

set aside for men who had been sentenced to death.

This cell had lots of glass to make sure the condemned man did not

cheat the hangman. As he lay in there, he could watch the prison

officers watching him, but it was not the lack of privacy which finally

got to him. It was the fact that the officers were listening to the

radio and the festive season hit that year was Rolf Harris singing Two

Little Boys. Even for a strong-minded man like Wilson, its endless

repetition became almost unbearable.

For most men in jail, apart from the obviously unstable, including the

increasing numbers of mentally ill or those who are vulnerable because

of their youth, the reason for taking their own lives is almost always

related to their domestic situation. Jail is already stressful enough

but the Dear John letter, or an acquaintance arriving in the same prison

and passing on the word that a wife was being unfaithful, can be enough

to tip some men over the edge.

In the case of Frederick West, the events of the last month

surrounding the Home Secretary's unilateral adoption of the full-life

tariff, with Myra Hindley becoming the first English killer to receive

official word that she will die in jail and all the subsequent

publicity, could well have been the trigger.

West literally had nothing left to live for except a life of endless

incarceration. He, plainly, was not made of sufficiently-stern stuff to

handle the idea of life meaning life.