FATAL SHAME

Most Rikers suicides are called preventable

THEY DIDN’T have to die.

Most of the suicides in city jails over the last five years could have been prevented if safeguards already on the books were followed, according to a review of jail records.

Nine of the 11 suicides over that time period were linked to inadequate medical treatment, bureaucratic bungling or the perception among correction officers that inmates threaten suicide to get better treatment, according to The Associated Press.

One devastated dad wants accountability.

“I watched the judge acknowledged in court that my son was suicidal and needs his medication. He never got any medication. They didn’t watch him,” John Giannotta told the Daily News.

His 41-year-old son Gregory used a jail jumpsuit to hang himself from an improperly exposed bathroom pipe last year.

“They let him go to a private bathroom, take his shirt off and attach it to a pipe and hang himself and die. Where was everybody?” the New Jersey dad asked Friday.

“It wasn’t one mistake. It was mistake after mistake. At some point it seems obvious that nobody gives a s---,” he said.” I have a lawsuit going, but it won’t bring my son back. A big part of my family is just gone.”

The suicide rate in city jails — 17 per 100,000 inmates — is below the national average of 41 per 100,000. But the recent spate of preventable deaths highlights a growing problem following the closures of many large mental health institutions.

The mentally ill now account for about 40% of the city’s jail population.

“It is our job to keep every New Yorker safe while they are in our care, and inmates are no different,” Mayor de Blasio said, adding the city has earmarked $32.5 million for new housing for mentally ill inmates.

The Correction Department, meanwhile, said it considers each suicide a “tragedy” and is taking steps “to prevent these incidents going forward.”

In one particularly egregious case, mentally ill inmate Horsone Moore used his underwear to hang himself from a shower in Rikers last October after two prior suicide attempts in quick succession. He had been found with a bedsheet tied into a noose the day before his death and was caught trying to fashion a shirt into a noose shortly before he used his underwear. He was peppersprayed at some point, landing him in the shower area.

Moore, 36, was clinically depressed but never saw a jail psychiatrist, never received medication and wasn’t watched constantly despite two such orders and a screening form that warned he was suicidal, the AP reported.