Tyler Robinson is currently in a Utah prison, under stringent security measures designed not only to prevent the shooting suspect from harming himself but also to mitigate the risk of any wrongdoing and additional controversy surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

The Utah County Sheriff’s Department has placed the 22-year-old Robinson on ‘special watch’—a protocol partially intended to ensure that an inmate does not self-harm while in custody.

The alleged killer, wearing a suicide prevention vest, made his first appearance in court via a video link, on Tuesday afternoon.

‘If I were managing the facility where Mr. Robinson is held, I would be extremely vigilant to avoid a repeat of the Jeffrey Epstein case,’ Lenard Vare, a jail conditions expert, told the Daily Mail.

Lt. Rhett Williams, a spokesperson for the sheriff, mentioned on Monday that he is ‘not authorized’ to discuss Robinson’s mental state or his accommodations in the 1,092-bed Utah County Jail’s ‘special housing unit,’ which is isolated from other inmates.

Experts assert that the accused shooter—now known as inmate number 460956 at the Spanish Fork, Utah facility—will be under uninterrupted observation, regardless of whether he has expressed suicidal thoughts.

Special watch cells are always lit, regardless of the time of day, so corrections officers can monitor the inmate’s movements at all times.

‘Keeping the lights on at all times is non-negotiable,’ explained Joseph Gunja, a jail consultant and expert witness with over three decades of experience at the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Vare adds that sleep deprivation and a lack of privacy can be overwhelming, especially for someone who, like Robinson, is doing his first stint behind bars.

‘These first few days are going to be the most severe for him. It’s obviously got to be very shocking as it all sinks in,’ he said.

Given the intense worldwide scrutiny around Kirk’s assassination, experts expect the sheriff’s department is also recording Robinson on a video system constantly monitored by another officer.

If one of the officers observing him needs to eat, make a phone call or relieve themselves, replacements are likely being sent in.

‘The point is not to take your eye off him for even a few seconds so nothing unfortunate happens,’ said Vare, a former prison warden and jail director in Nevada and California who has served as expert witnesses in prison suicide cases worldwide.

Inmates placed on special watch generally aren’t allowed to wear regular prison garb. 

Instead, they’re given special anti-suicide smocks – known among inmates as ‘turtle suits’ or ‘pickle suits’ – made of an especially thick material that they cannot tear or use to hang or suffocate themselves. 

‘It’s for those same reasons that bedsheets, blankets and pillows typically aren’t provided.

Walls and floors in special watch cells tend to be cushioned so inmates can’t injure themselves by banging their heads against them. 

The cells generally have no hooks or other hardware with which inmates could otherwise cause harm to themselves. 

Some have combined toilets and sinks whose plumbing is embedded behind walls to keep inmates from hurting themselves with dismantled pipes. Some simply have holes in the ground instead of toilets to avoid the need for plumbing altogether.

​​If there are mirrors in special watch cells, they’re usually made of stainless steel, not glass that can be shattered into sharp pieces. 

Light fixtures are secured on high ceilings where inmates can’t reach them, break bulbs into shards or electrocute themselves.

Meals typically are delivered on soft trays through meal slots and expected to be eaten without utensils, or ‘even a spork’, Gunja said.

Pencils and pens are strictly forbidden. And, in some jails’ special watch cells, napkins and toilet paper may even be limited so inmates don’t try to use them to choke or cut off their airways.

‘People have tried to harm themselves by trying to swallow their socks,’ Vare said.

Jails typically assess the mental health of inmates in their first few days after being booked to decide, among other things, what kind of cells they should be housed in while awaiting trial and what, if any, medication or treatment they may need.

Mental health experts and civil rights watchdogs have long argued that the intense surveillance and deprivations that come from being under ‘special watch’ can exacerbate pre-existing mental health problems or trigger new ones among inmates.

Vare points to what he calls the ‘irony’ that inmates often don’t tell mental health evaluators that they’re suicidal because conditions under ‘special watch’ only make their situations worse.

‘People know what will happen if they disclose it,’ he said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said earlier this week that Robinson is ‘not cooperating’ with law enforcement officials. 

It is unclear if that includes mental health evaluators as well as investigators questioning why he may have targeted Kirk, 31, a conservative activist, author and media personality killed September 10 while speaking to a crowd of about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Robinson, a student in an electrical apprenticeship program, is accused of killing Kirk with a single rifle shot from a rooftop about 200 yards away before fleeing into a neighborhood and driving three hours to his home in Southwestern Utah.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has said Robinson – who was raised in a Republican family – had been ‘infected’ by an extreme leftist ideology leading up to Kirk’s assassination. 

Cox, for his part, has surmised that Robinson may have been motivated to kill Kirk, an outspoken critic of LGBTQ rights, to avenge his apartment-mate and possible romantic partner, whom the governor said is undergoing a transition from male to female.

That partner, Lane Twiggs, 22, reportedly has been helpful to investigators.

Authorities have not made public any definitive evidence about Robinson’s political beliefs and possible motive.

He was taken into custody on September 11 and transported 250 miles north to the Utah County Jail after one of his family members apparently recognized him from surveillance photographs distributed by authorities and after he confessed to a family friend and to friends via a group chat in the two days after the Kirk’s killing.

A judge ordered that he be held without bail on suspicion of obstruction of justice, aggravated murder and felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm.

Robinson is slated to appear via video in court Tuesday afternoon and formal charges are expected soon to follow.

It is unclear if he will be represented by a public defender or a private defense lawyer.

If convicted, Robinson is likely to face the death penalty – a lengthy process that could lead him to spend years and even decades behind bars before the sentence is carried out. 

He will likely live out his dying days at the Utah State Correctional Facility, in Salt Lake City. 

One Utah inmate, Ralph Manzies, is still on death row after being sentenced to death in 1988 for the killing two years earlier of Maurine Hunsaker, a 26-year-old gas station attendant.

As Vare tells it, the precautions Utah County’s Sheriff’s Department is likely taking with Robinson aren’t meant only to protect him from self-harm. 

He said the jail likely also aims to protect the shooting suspect from ‘foul play’ either by other inmates or jail staff motivated by any number of reasons, including a desire to avenge Kirk’s killing or infamy.

‘Something bad could happen in a case this high-profile. Somebody could end up taking his life just because they know that will make them famous,’ Vare said.

If he were running Utah County’s jail, Vare said he would take special steps to vet officers who come into contact with Robinson and make sure they were working in pairs at all times.

‘I would be talking to my staff and explaining the importance of remaining professional under all circumstances and not letting any personal thoughts enter into their conduct. 

‘I mean, they’ve just got to do it by the book so nothing comes into question later on.’

Vare pointed specifically to the 2019 suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. 

Despite rulings by the New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department Inspector General that the convicted child sex abuser took his own life by hanging himself with a bedsheet, a long series of protocol breaches and other missteps by the Bureau of Prisons fueled conspiracy theories that Epstein was murdered.

Some of those theories persist six years later.

Similar conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death already abound less than a week after his assassination. 

Anything preventing Robinson from standing trial and facing accountability, should he be found guilty, could trigger a wave of unrest, distrust and misinformation that would make the Epstein case pale in comparison.

Said Vare: ‘In a case with this kind of attention and notoriety, that’s the last thing anybody needs.’