NDCPD, RCJC and NDDoH provide suicide-prevention training to law enforcement personnel

Minot State University’s North Dakota Center for Persons with Disabilities and Rural Crime and Justice Center and the North Dakota Department of Health, Suicide Prevention Program are collaborating on a new project for suicide prevention. The North Dakota Suicide Prevention and Incarceration Project is designed to provide law enforcement and jail personnel with training and information on policies, procedures and operations techniques to reduce suicides and suicide attempts in jails.

Brent Askvig, NDCPD executive director and this project’s director, indicated that the program will bring in a nationally recognized consultant to train law enforcement and jail personnel of safety, security and policy issues. Then, NDCPD and RCJC staff will provide individualized technical assistance to incarceration facilities and personnel related to policy and procedures as outlined by the training consultant.

“Our goal is to provide training and assistance to law enforcement and jail staff who face challenges of staffing time, facilities-structure issues and operational procedures so that prisoners would not engage in risk behaviors related to suicide,” Askvig said.

The project, which will run through June 30, 2015, is funded by the NDDoH Suicide Prevention Program.

For more information, contact Askvig at brent.askvig@minotstateu.edu or 858-3580 or Micki Savelkoul, North Dakota Suicide Prevention Program, at mlsavelkoul@nd.gov or 328-4580.

 

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Published: 09/05/14   


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