It's not news that there are problems in America's prisons, including mass incarceration and forced labor — but there is another crisis in those same prisons that doesn't always garner the same attention.

There is an epidemic of correctional officers dying by suicide — an epidemic that a handful of lawmakers are working to address, against long odds.

"Most people don't realize what correctional officers go through," Jon Zumkehr, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 4070, which represents employees at Thomson Federal Prison in Illinois, said in an interview with Law360. "We're kind of like the forgotten law enforcement."

This statement is backed up by research from professors at Northeastern University's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In a March 2023 paper, they wrote there is a "dearth of research" on correctional officers dying by suicide, "in part because they are not traditional 'first responders'" like police officers or firefighters.

Zumkehr, speaking on behalf of the union, not the agency, has worked as a correctional officer for the Federal Bureau of Prisons for over 18 years. In that time, eight of his colleagues have died by suicide, he said. One of the colleagues Zumkehr lost was officer Blake Schwarz in March 2023. Schwarz worked for the Bureau of Prisons at Thomson for almost four years.

In the wake of Schwarz's death, Zumkehr and the union at large have been working with lawmakers to advocate for the Corrections Officer Blake Schwarz Suicide Prevention Act, which would bolster mental health resources for correctional officers at the local, state and federal levels.

"Blake's wife, Michelle, shared that she did not know what [mental health] resources were available for staff," Zumkehr said. "That became our focus: making sure all staff know what resources are available to them."

Intense and Inadequate Conditions

The reason suicide rates are often higher for correctional officers than other law enforcement officers can be attributed to the "intense conditions for staff," which increases stress, anxiety and exhaustion. Those conditions are compounded by long hours, minimal emotional support and low pay, said Chloe Aquart, director of the Restoring Promise Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, which works to fight mass incarceration.

Overcrowding in prisons is another factor that contributes to stressful conditions and reducing this would decrease the overall strain on the system, she said.

Correctional officers are "working under the same conditions that incarcerated people are living in," Aquart said. "They are also working in places that lack natural light, that do not have access to the outdoors, they are disconnected from society often because they are not able to use personal cellphones or have connections to folks [and] they are eating food that isn't adequate for them because the spaces that they have are inadequate."

Part of the challenge in making changes to the conditions in prisons is overcoming the "paramilitary" culture in corrections work that relies on officers being "tough," she noted.

Another significant challenge in the federal prison system is a yearslong staffing shortage, which experts say impacts correctional officers' mental well-being.

Brandy Moore White, president of the Council of Prison Locals, a division of AFGE that represents BOP employees, said there are fewer than 13,000 federal correctional officers and the union estimates about 20,000 are needed. She said she has been working with Zumkehr on the bill and trying to boost staffing numbers and improve overall work conditions in prisons.

On Sept. 25, the day before Law360 spoke with Moore White, President Donald Trump's BOP director, William K. Marshall III, announced he was canceling the agency's collective bargaining agreement, which the union protested.

"Our morale is already super horrible" and the agency stripping away collective bargaining protections will make it worse, Moore White said.

Before the contract was canceled, there was "a policy we negotiated about mental health issues ... Hopefully, they keep that in place," she said.

The mental health crisis has not gone unnoticed by the agency.

BOP spokesperson Carl Bailey told Law360 that "BOP leadership is immensely concerned about the well-being of our workforce, and we recognize that the work of correctional professionals is uniquely demanding and can take a toll on mental health."

He said that in April 2023 the agency created a "formal employee wellness policy" followed by the establishment of the National Employee Wellness Branch within the human resources management division in October 2024.

"We are hoping to add more interactive mental health support services to our [employee assistance program]," such as an artificial intelligence chat function available 24/7 and more online training available around the clock on wellness topics, Bailey said.

According to data from the agency, from 1999 to the present, 189 BOP employees have died by suicide. That data does not include former or retired employees, but it does reflect deaths that occurred off duty if the individual was employed by BOP at the time.

When asked whether she thinks the BOP's numbers are accurate, Moore White said, "It's hard to say, but I would assume it's fairly accurate. It would be a much larger number if they included retired, medically retired, or people they forced to resign or [were] fired."

But finding out how many officers die each year nationwide is complicated, according to experts.

Data collection on this is a "relatively new area," said Daniel Lawrence, senior research scientist at the Center for Justice Research and Innovation at the CNA Corp., a nonprofit research organization.

He noted a law enacted in June 2020 required the FBI to start a database to track death by suicide for federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, which includes correctional officers. The FBI launched the database in January 2022.

Lawrence said one of the challenges with this effort is that the FBI has to rely on law enforcement agencies to report the data.

While the data displayed online does not break down the deaths by occupation, the FBI told Law360 that the total number of correctional officers who died by suicide reported to the database from 2022 to the present is 35.

"The FBI data collection is lackluster at best," according to Karen Solomon, founder and president of First H.E.L.P., which works to reduce the stigma of mental health among first responders and has its own data collection on their deaths by suicide. The organization also works to support families who have lost loved ones to suicide.

"We have thousands and thousands of suicides in our database, and they have hundreds," she said.

Her organization sources its data more broadly, including reports from friends and family, news stories and social media.

Solomon, who served on the FBI's task force on law enforcement suicide data collection, said corrections departments are incentivized not to report deaths through the federal portal because doing so could make them look bad.

But despite their best efforts, First H.E.L.P.'s data on correctional officers, specifically, is "really low." When correctional officers die by suicide, it's not reported in the news as often as other law enforcement officer deaths by suicide, and families are more reluctant to report it, Solomon said.

For example, while the FBI database says there are nine deaths by suicides among correctional officers nationwide for 2025, Solomon said she believes it's really "much higher" than that.

The Bill

While the Corrections Officer Blake Schwarz Suicide Prevention Act has enthusiastic supporters, it has not made much progress working its way through Congress.

In March, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, reintroduced the bill, which would establish a grant program for state and local governments to provide mental health screenings for correctional officers and refer them to mental health providers as needed.

For the BOP, it would require the agency director to administer mental health surveys to correctional officers and put together an outreach team to refer officers to treatment.

So far, the bill has not been taken up by committee and has just three co-sponsors, all Republicans. However, Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., also is a champion of the bill and gave a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives about it in April. His office did not respond when asked if he would sign on as a co-sponsor.

The Congressional Budget Office has not done a cost estimate for the bill. The office is only required to do this review after a bill has passed out of committee.

CNA's Lawrence said while it's important for the federal government to be a leader on agency wellness programs, based on his research, access to these programs outside the workplace is important.

"There is a stigma associated with it and if you provide the access without the review of the agency and the know-how of the agency it's going to improve program participation," he said.

The stigma could come from a variety of sources.

"Many officers report serious privacy concerns, worrying that if their participation became known, it could strain relationships with peers and supervisors or harm their careers," Lawrence said. "Some officers perceive stigma because they believe program counselors do not fully understand the culture or experiences," which could lead them to see the services as "ineffective."

Additionally, officers could feel the stigma from taking time away from work or their families to seek help, he added.

According to Aquart, the bill is "off to a good start," but she said she'd like to see it go further and offer more tools to address the crisis.

"A stronger bill would include requiring mental health screenings following incidents where physical force was used or other types of assault, following the death of an incarcerated person or a staff person's death, and when returning to work from bereavement or administrative leave," she said.

Aquart said that in many jurisdictions, law enforcement officers are subject to mandatory mental health screenings after "difficult incidents that occur on the job."

While the Corrections Officer Blake Schwarz Suicide Prevention Act hasn't been taken up by the House, there have been other efforts by lawmakers to address correctional officers' mental health crisis.

The House's and U.S. Senate's yet-to-be-enacted appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026 for the U.S. Department of Justice each include language directing full implementation of the Federal Prison Oversight Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in July 2024.

The law requires the DOJ's Office of Inspector General to conduct regular inspections of prison facilities, which should look at, among other things,"medical services and mental health resources for staff."

Additionally, in the funding bill the House Appropriations Committee's Commerce, Science and Justice panel approved in September, lawmakers expressed concerns about mental health among BOP officers.

"The committee is concerned about the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide among correctional officers and commends the patriotism and hard work of this critical workforce," the bill text reads. "The committee encourages BOP to emphasize the availability of relevant services and resources and work with their employees to determine what systemic practices could improve officer mental health outcomes."

The funding bill also directs the BOP to report to the committee no more than 90 days after the enactment of the bill what mental health services are available at each of BOP's facilities.

Correctional officers' mental health crisis, however, isn't happening in a vacuum. The same conditions that affect them also affect the people incarcerated in the facilities where the officers work.

The DOJ inspector general published a report in February 2024 that said about 54% of the 344 deaths of incarcerated people at BOP institutions from fiscal 2014 through 2021 were suicides.

The watchdog found that the BOP had various policies that could "mitigate certain risks associated with inmate suicide," but they also saw "a combination of recurring policy violations and a multitude of operational failures at institutions contributed to inmate suicides," the report stated.

"What cannot be denied is that working in prisons is a traumatic experience because prisons are traumatic places," said Wanda Bertram, communications strategist at the Prison Policy Initiative. "No one knows this better than incarcerated people who have even higher rates of trauma and mental distress."

Michelle Schwarz, Blake Schwarz's widow, said she would be "baffled" by the things he would tell her about his experiences, "but I never quite understood it until I worked there."

She worked at the same facility for about a year as a nurse and comes from a family of correctional officers. Now she runs the nonprofit Paws for the Powerless in her husband's honor to provide free therapy dogs to those in need.

"He was the person that everyone thought had it all together and everyone thought was the person that nothing bothered him," Michelle Schwarz said. "Obviously, that wasn't the case."

--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo and Jay Jackson Jr.

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