THE LOSS OF MY BROTHER TRANELL NASH:
“Those In Prison Are At Greater Risk of Suicide”
by- leon benson 3.20.21
“I just wanna die, let me tell you why/ All this other shit I’m talking ’bout they think they know it/ I been praying for somebody to come save me—no one’s heroic/ And my life don’t matter I know it, I know it/ I know I’m hurting deep down, but can’t show it/ I never had a place to call my own/ I never had a home, ain’t nobody calling my phone/ Where you been? Where you at? What’s on yo mind?/ They say every life is precious, but nobody care about mine.”—Logic, 1-800-273-8255 (2017)
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I remember hearing the above lyrics playing on the radio. In the song entitled “1-800-273-8255” (a real suicide prevention hotline), Hop Hop artist, Logic, gave the world a rare message about the issue of suicide. The song was on the radio for several months. Sadly, once this song was replaced by the next trending hit, so was the national conversation on such a taboo topic.
In Flint, Michigan where i grew up there was not much talk about suicide. When the topic was brought up about those who committed suicide, they were often seen as weak. Even those proclaiming the Christian faith deemed suicide an unforgiving sin. These early experiences caused me to believe those who attempted or committed suicide were of lesser character.
Then, two of my childhood peers committed suicide. First, Marlon Veal in 1996. He shot himself while alluding the police. Second, Vincent “Harpo” Crum in 1997. He shot his girlfriend and then shot himself in a suicide-murder attempt. By the grace of God she survived. In both instances I was in denial that they would do such a thing. There had to be another explanation. But time revealed that they both committed the deadly deeds.
For many years after their deaths I was angry with them. Because we were raised to be stronger than that. We were taught not to cry or to run from fights. But, i was grossly MISEDUCATED about suicide.
WTF…NOT TRANELL NASH?
Fast forward my life to present day 2021, and after experiencing 22 yrs of incarceration. When i received the horrible news, in February, that my friend and follow prisoner, Tranell Nash, committed suicide while @ Pendleton Correctional Facility (PCF). I was shocked, confused, and brought to tears.
In 2011 I was sent to PCF after a decade of solitary confinement. It was there that I first encountered Nash, who other prisoners called “Fried” due to his drug use and quick temper. We met while attending Hebrew Israelite spiritual services. It was there we were given our true Israelite names. Mine is LAVI and his EL NATAN. After our naming ceremony I never called him Fried again.
In time we grew a genuine bond and respect for each other. Although he was 7 yrs my junior, I admired his mature and serious attitude toward Biblical Prophesy, humanism, and the upliftment of at-risk communities, particularly those of color in Indianapolis, where he was from. He always expressed a powerful need to redeem his past through community outreach. Because in 2005, he was sentenced to 50 yrs in prison for murder. Although he was remorseful, he carried a heavy, spiritual burden for the life he took.
This motivated Nash to look for ways to help the outside and inside communities. In 2018 we created a correspondence program for at risk youth, domestic violence victims, the elderly, and newly released inmates. The program’s therapeutic aims were to provide at risk groups with wisdom, acknowledgement, healing, and constructive venting space. We worked with Dee Ross of The Ross Foundation in Indianapolis, and Dr. Venson Jordan of The Jordan Wellness Adventure Center in Rhode Island.
Between 2018-19 we participated in a program called TRUE•SELF. There we worked SUICIDE WATCH and had to observe other prisoners in dry cells who attempted or threaten to commit suicide. We witnessed many suicidal deaths at PCF, but mostly attempts.
I remember having extended conversations with Nash and others about these suicides. Because we had personally known the majority of the victims. In addition, before taking up SUICIDE WATCH we had to complete a seminar training that RE-EDUCATED us about the statistics, risk factors, and prevention of suicide.
Due to my experiences combined from PCF and solitary confinement, I was no longer the naïve 20 year old mislead to be indifferent to those who attempted and committed suicide. However, there remains many unanswered questions surrounding the the alleged suicide of Tranell Nash.
Why would he kill himself while having such a rich understanding of practical spirituality and suicide prevention? He only had 9 yrs left on his sentence and he could have been released much earlier through time cut programs. He had great family support. Was it the isolation from family visitation due to Covid-19 quarantine restrictions that pushed him over the ledge? It was rumored that he was in a paranoid state days before the incident. Was it a cry for help or illicit drugs? Was it an official cover up by PCF guards and staff? He was very private and never shared his inner feelings with many others. Also, he carried a deep spiritual burden due to the life he had taken. Did my brother, EL Natan perform some type of spiritual hara-kiri?
Many of our questions may never be answered. But, EL Natan’s life mattered whether he was in prison or not. He was a good brother and IS a child of YAHWEH. So we must use his life as an example to examine prison suicide prevention much, more deeply.
Before moving forward, I sincerely ask that the reader take a moment of pause in honor of my brother and other victims of suicide…Shalom. Rest In Power EL Natan Ben-Yisrayl. Selah.
RISK FACTORS FOR SUICIDE
#1- Biopsychological. Mental disorders (manic depression, schizophrenia), mood disorders (bipolarism), and certain personality disorders; alcohol & drug abuse; hopelessness; ; impulsive & aggressive tendencies; history of trauma & abuse; major physical illness; prior suicide attempt; & family history of suicide.
#2- Environmental. Job or financial loss; relational or social loss; easy access to lethal weapons or drugs; & the contagious influence from local suicide clusters.
#3- Sociocultural. Stigma associated with help seeking behavior; lack of social support & a sense of isolation; limited access to health care, especially mental health & substance abuse treatment; media exposure & influence of others who have died from suicide; & certain cultural and religious beliefs that makes suicide a noble resolution of existential dilemma.
The above risk factors are more specific to people in so-called “normal society” and should be taken seriously. According to statistics men are more likely than women to succeed in committing suicide. While women attempt more non-lethal forms of suicide.
However, the factor that should highlighted here too is how all these risk factors for suicide puts people in carceral environments at m
uch, greater risk than those in society.
PRISONS ARE FACTORIES OF SUICIDE
In a 2018 song entitled “I Thought About Killing You” by renown and now billionaire, Hip Hop artist, Kanye West, he expressed the following:
[“Weigh all the options. Nothing is off the table. Today I thought about killing you. Premeditated murder. I think about killing myself and I love myself way more than I love you. The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest.”]
My point for sharing this excerpt was to compare the thoughts of this affluent, wealthy, and highly successful person, with that of what might be going through the minds of the lowly, socially outcast, and forgotten 2.2 million people now held in the darkest dungeons of American prisons. Even more immediate, more than 75% of the people currently incarcerated will be released back into society. Probably right next door to you?
It has been proven by study after study that prisons are not places for true rehabilitation. More specifically, although Indiana prisons do provide some mental health programs, those programs are so underfunded, under staffed, and limited with intake space that they have little impact on the mass majority of prisoners passing through its gates.
Essentially prison officials are throwing people into cages under the worst conditions that puts them at greater risk for suicide and other destructive behaviors. This is like providing prisoners with proverbial razor blades to slit their own wrists. In other words, this is state sponsored suicide. If not while the person is still in prison, but carried over in their behavior upon release.
Imagine for a second the pressures that the average person experiences daily while enduring long term incarceration. It can be called a serious mind f—k. Deeply consider the following carceral risk factors:
IMAGINE that you were sentenced to at least 10 yrs or more in prison. For your crime you lost everything you had. Your significant other left you and doesn’t allow your children to communicate with you. Nobody provides you financial support for attorney fees for your appeals nor for you to purchase commissary. Now you are left to the whims of the state and other prisoners.
IMAGINE not receiving a letter in years. Then when you attempt to call someone they never answer the phone; or when they do they never listen to your deepest concerns or hurt. Rather they patronize you with rambles. While you are trying to express that your last appeal was denied and you are now doomed to die in prison, if not for a revolution.
IMAGINE that you can trust nobody. They are either the OPPS or mentally insane. While you are held in solitary confinement indefinitely. Where the guards play in your food and will beat you to death. While other inmates scream so loud over the unit that you can hardly hear yourself think.
…And knowing that others prisoners had killed themselves to escape lesser hardship. All of this while believing that if you died in that cell nobody in the outside world would notice.
Now IMAGINE that with any combination of the above experiences that you were actually innocent. Would you not contemplate suicide under such harsh conditions?
While in solitary confinement I, too, contemplated killing myself. I never admitted this publicly until now. This was in 2002 when I felt the most alienation, hopelessness, and powerlessness over my circumstance. However, what kept me alive is encouraging words from a couple kites (letters) from my brother, Ramar Danials from another range. Plus, I realized in that moment that if I died then my truth would die too. This is when I spiritually resurrected with the mantra TRUTH NEVER DIES IT IS ONLY REDISCOVERED.
In time I realized prison conditions in general, let alone those in solitary confinement units, are structural risk factors. By design prison manufactures suicidal tendencies. All of this before a person is ever released back into society. Now IMAGINE formerly incarcerated people having a bad day while standing next to you in a line at a gas station. BOOM.
REMOVE THE WALLS & LISTEN
“If any man have ears, let him hear. And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you. And unto you that hear more shall be given.”
—MARK 4:23-24
To prevent prison suicide is to commit to one simple skill: ACTIVE LISTENING. Communications expert Kelly Fowler observed, “We saw the importance of active listening, rather than the combative or passive approaches to listening which lie behind much failed communication…As listeners, we tend to “tune in” to the level we think is most important. However, we may have no idea what the speaker thinks is most important, and this can create misperceptions or crossed wires, which yield undesirable results.“
Fowler shares three different levels of communication: factual, beliefs, & emotional. Be sure to know which level you are engaging a person. This takes active listening.
The majority of victims felt mentally and emotionally isolated for days, months, or even years before they even attempted or committed suicide. Clearly, the people around them were not actively listening or were doing so combatively or passively. When we compare these low standards of listening to prisoners, the most marginalized group in U.$. society, it becomes more obvious of why this group is at the greatest risk.
Being in prison automatically comes with the social stigma that you are a cheat, con, manipulator, sociopath, liar, pimp, or swindler. We have all heard the cliché that “All people in prison say they are innocent” used as a means not to listen to or take people incarcerated seriously. Ironically, many prisoners carry this implicit, but often explicit bias against each other as well.
It is impossible to over-emphasize the deep need that all human beings have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood. Few know this need more than the ones locked up and locked out of the social empathy from those closest to them. The need to be understood while in prison starts out like a scream at the top of your voice. But after screaming for so long without any significant response the voice becomes hoarse, and then eventually silenced. Now the mental suffocations begin.
In today’s society people are distracted by cell phones, working, social media, or raising children. They hardly listen to each other. Therefore, it is harder for them to listen to the needs of loved ones in prison.
However, in order to prevent more victims from dying so senselessly in prison like Tranell Nash, WE all must listen to each other more actively. The next time you get that GTL collect call—Listen! You may be saving a life without knowing it.
#prisonlivesmatter
SOURCES
•”Suicide Watches By Inmates Benefit All.” By K. Kersting. p. 16, Psychological Services (Vol. 2, No 1)
•”Risk and Protective Factors for Suici
de.” Suicide Watch Handout #3
•”Listen Up: Remove the Barriers; Hear the Words.” By Kellie Fowler