Staff in adult and youth custodial facilities are required to report incidents involving threats of self-harm, acts of self-harm and actual attempts of suicide (DOJ, 2020).
Actual self-harm incidents are later classified as either ‘minor’ or ‘serious’ using algorithms that consider information provided during the incident reporting process. Typically, a serious self-harm incident will involve an actual occurrence of self-harm that results in ongoing medical treatment or overnight hospitalisation. Minor self-harm incidents are occurrences of actual self-harm, but without the need for external medical treatment or overnight hospitalisation.
Attempted suicides are reported as critical incidents and are not affected by the abovementioned classification process.
Threats of self-harm include threats to commit acts of self-injury such as self-laceration, self-battering or deliberate recklessness, all without suicidal intentions.
The Department does not have a requirement to report threats of suicide and no incident type exists for a person displaying suicidal ideation or making threats of suicide (DOJ, 2020). However, we find these are typically reported as threats of self-harm.