Billy Slagle’s suicide in August, just three days before his execution, offers a revealing look at a broken death row system that mishandles potentially suicidal prisoners. It desperately needs mending.

According to an Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction report on the Slagle suicide, the Chillicothe Correctional Institution and other death row prisons must do more to evaluate prisoners as they approach their execution dates to determine whether to place them under heightened watch or take other precautions. …

Still, Gary Mohr, who heads the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, deserves praise for quickly accepting the panel’s recommendations, which include beefing up the training of relief guards on death row and seeking the advice of mental health professionals regarding inmates.

Mohr also has hired two prison experts to look at Ohio prison suicides, said Joellen Smith, a spokeswoman for the corrections department. Their report is due Nov. 15.

Their findings will be critical because Slagle wasn’t the only high-profile prisoner whose suicide is under investigation: Ariel Castro, the notorious Cleveland kidnapper and rapist, hung himself just a month into his life-plus-1,000-year sentence. …

It’s unrealistic to expect that all prison suicides can be stopped, but more can be done to try to understand and curtail it. …

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer