h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's something that's crossed my mind recently.

A prisoner who's likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars gets hold of some drugs and takes an overdose....

Should the prison services rush him to hospital and try to save his life or should they just shut the cell door and come back a couple of hours later?

What it really comes down to is the question 'Why is the guy in prison?'
If the answer is 'to protect the public from a potentially evil man', then logically, let him go.
If the answer is 'to make him suffer as he made others suffer'. Then make sure he lives.

So just what are our prisons for?

Especially given that there are many people in prison with mental health problems, the authorities do have a duty to react when they see people attempt suicide.
However, if someone (especially someone unlikely to ever be released) is really determined to kill themselves, I think there's a limit how much effort should be put into stopping them.

Why was Ian Brady not allowed to kill himself?

When you become a prisoner, you lose a number of rights. One of those rights is the right to kill yourself.

This may seem perverse, but the problem lies in making the distinction between those prisoners who are disturbed or fragile, and who need to be protected from themselves, and someone making a calculated decision.

Quite a large percentage of suicide attempts are made by young offenders on remand, it might be worth noting.

sprout

Quote;
What it really comes down to is the question 'Why is the guy in prison?'
If the answer is 'to protect the public from a potentially evil man', then logically, let him go.
If the answer is 'to make him suffer as he made others suffer'. Then make sure he lives.

There a far more options than the two here.
I have been working a couples of years as a social worker in prisons
in The netherlands.
The regimes are getting tougher, because crime itself is getting tougher.

When a prisoner is in his "room" he'she still is part of the prison and others bear for a part responsability for prisoners health, etc.
For that reason there are social workers, shrinks, etc. because you don't want them to return as zombies or even móre professional in criminality.

Prison itself is not in the interest of society, except the person
is locked for a while.
Far most of them get tougher and new criminal relations inside.
For sóme it's a turning point to a more civil life.

And suïcide; well the person is part of the prison, so
the regime team is for its share responsable for the health and no one wants to see a prisoner to hang himeself, altough I am very liberal concerning suïcide, but then I talk of people outside prison.

Sometimes suïcide is the "best" option and there's no reason to carry on an unbearable life.

P.S. I am talking about "prisoners"= people that have been sentenced for their crimes.
But suspects who are locked up are a different story.

"When you become a prisoner, you lose a number of rights. One of those rights is the right to kill yourself."

I don't think you have the legal right to kill yourself anyway, prisoner or no. I seem to recall hearing a story about someone who attempted suicide and there being talk of them being prosecuted.

The penalty for an attempted suicide used to be death. Seriously.

TRiG.

My current understanding of English and Welsh criminal law is that while aiding and abetting a suicide itself is illegal, attempting suicide is not.

It certainly isn't prosecuted.

sprout

Apparently it used to be a prosecutable offense, according to Nog.

As for letting prisoners off themselves, it seems easy to say about the likes of Charles Manson and Ian Huntley that they should be offered the sharp razors and hot bath - such slime would be doing the world a favour by ending their sorry lives by their own hand.

But in general, as Potholer pointed out, many prisoners can have mental health problems and the very fact of being in prison might make them feel desperate enough to attempt suicide - these people should be helped as best as can be done.

So... where to draw the line?

az

To answer Whisky's original question ...

<<'Why is the guy in prison?'
If the answer is 'to protect the public from a potentially evil man', then logically, let him go.
If the answer is 'to make him suffer as he made others suffer'. Then make sure he lives.>>

Surely imprisonment is meant to be both a punishment and also a means of protecting the public.

But there are so many different levels of punishment. Someone put in prison for six months after a robbery attempt is quite different from someone given a (so-called) life sentence for unspeakably horrific and heinous crimes.

I have no moral problem with the latter being given an 'out'. In the good old Roman fashion. Let them take their own lives and be done with them. They have already forfeited their right to live in society by doing what they did so why burden the taxpayers by keeping them alive for 50 years, housing and feeding them?

az

I asked a question in ask a while back about why life sentences were called that. It was never meant to indicate that it was to mean 'for the whole of your life' - it was simply to distinguish from death sentences.

I've never understood how someone could get, say, four life sentences but still be eligible for parole in x-amount of years.

az

I hope this doesn't derail the discussion, but would those who are in favour of allowing certain prisoners the option of suicide also be in favour of voluntary euthanasia for those whose life chances who similarly have no prospect of improvement - e.g. the terminally ill, but also others with medical conditions or disabilitites that makes life intolerable *for them*? It would seem morally inconsistent to allow prisoners the option, but not those who bear much less responsibility for their reduced life chances?

It *is* actually derailing the discussion, Otto, but I have no moral problem with people who choose to end their lives due to the options you have posted.

az

Well, in that case, feel free to ignore it. Just a point about consistency thrown in to provoke thought....

I also have no problem with people who choose to end their lives in any circumstances, but see my A829604 Advice for Suicides (Sep 16, 2002)for caveats.
Agatha Christie used to say that convicted murderers should be given the opportunity of taking part in drug trials as human guinea pigs, rather than just rotting for 30 years. How would that strike the rest of you?
Ian Brady is one of the few for whom "Life means life". I wwould have no problem with his suicide

Sounds distasteful.

No better than torturing them.

In general I am not in favour of 'informal' punishments - eg gang rape of sex offenders, being encouraged to top yourself, whatever.

The punishment is what is handed down by the court - so if we think prisoners should be experimented on, allowed to kill themselves, beaten up by other inmates or whatever, then this needs to be part of the judicial process, not just tacked on as an ad hoc thing.

Personally, I like to think that society does not seek to move down to the level of its most unpleasant members - inherent in the doing to them what they did to others philosophy.

sprout

I'm still undecided as to whether or not life prisoners should be allowed to commit suicide. My inclination is that it should be offered as a legal option.

It's a fault of the media rather than the act itself, but when such suicide attempts are reported, I wonder how the victims of the crime feel at having the case raised to high profile again?

az has asked the most important question of all.

Where would we draw the line, because one needs drawing *if* this sort of thing were made an option.

A 20 year old likely to serve 10 years for fraud?

Perhaps not.

What about a forty year old given a 25 year stretch for torturing and killing "enemy combatants"?

Maybe.

A 55 year old going down for 30 years for raping sweet innocent little school girls?

I dont have to ask most of you this one as you've aleady answered.

What a lot of you may not know is that some prisoners are allowe to commit suicide. OK the evideence Ive heard has been totally anecdotal but Ive heard it from both ex-prisoners and current and ex prison warders. It is simply a case of officers turining a blind eye to the accumulation of pills or forgettting to collect craft knives. Then stretching out the gaps between rounds on sucicde watches.

All well and good I hear someof you say, but at the moment it is a system that is not a system at all and as Della has often said one euthanasia threads...who *really* decides...

What if the 20 year old finacial fraudster happened to have emptied a warders dear old uncles pension fund? Might the warder be tempted to encourage the embezzler to take "the honourable option".

In an environment full criminals and staffed by people with a shocking propensity for sadism I wouldnt like to see any legalosed killing being allowed.

one love

If we had the death penalty it would be applied. But we don't.

It's too easy to say "serves him right, let him die" of someone like Ian Brady, but what about those who just can't cope with prison? Those who are being bullied and browbeaten and feel as though death is the only way out. Should we allow that?

It feels like execution by the back door to me (and I'm anti death penalty as I ask people to remind me should the worst happen)

And not forgetting - if we have people like Ian Brady (or whoever, Ian (?) Huntley) in prison for a long time, we can all feel as though he gets to suffer. Even if it's only a wee bit compared to what his victims suffered.

How many people here feel "cheated" now that people like Fred West and Dr. Chapman have ended their lives?