Does not explain anything.
Just speculating here, but was that paragraph break really necessary?
She’s not comparing the two, but just pointing out the ridiculousness and hideousness of your misanthropist statement in post #15, unless that one was tongue-in-cheek…
I can think of another explanation, but I will not point it out,
since that might take some of the fun out of your roaming
the speculative landscape.
As for the paragraph break I format my posts to please myself,
but there is no sense of necessity about it.
There is nothing ridiclous about wishing for the end of numerous
categories of life, except in the minds of the intellectually anal.
I agree. I’ve never in my life contemplated suicide or been depressed or any of that, but if you told me I had to go to prison for 20+ years, I’d do whatever it took to off myself. That’s not crazy, that’s a rational choice. And yeah, I’d support assisted suicide for any prisoner who wants it.
Most inmates do manage to make some sort of functional lives for themselves while in prison, complete with their own pleasures and satisfactions. So while the desire to do self-harm when confronted with the knowledge of impending incarceration is understandable, it’s not necessarily rational. It’s more of a permanent solution to a temporary adjustment disorder in the vast majority of cases.
I imagine a major reason is that suicides and “suicides” are counter to good order in the prison. Think of it from the prison staff point of view. You don’t want to have to investigate all these suicides as possible murders, you don’t want your staff accused of killing prisoners, you don’t want inmates rioting over the suspicious deaths of other prisoners.
There may be a fair number of prison staffers who enjoy making prisoner’s lives more miserable, up to and including driving them to suicide, helping them to commit suicide, or murdering them and disguising it as suicide. But most staffers would just rather have a quiet day at work where nothing out of the ordinary happens and there’s no paperwork to fill out.
It is also supposed to be a deterrent. Don’t do these things or you will be punished.
Because they are human beings.
Good point.
Another good point. Maybe assisted suicide would not be an option until, say, five years into a life sentence. Maybe a prisoner who is petitioning for assisted suicide should have mandatory counselling first.
There’s probably an argument to be made that not allowing incarcerated humans the same freedom to decide when to end their lives that we all have is inhumane.
[underlining mine]
Legal scholars[sup]1[/sup] generally recognize five valid justifications for “punishment.” Not one or two, as you suggest. [ol][li]Specific deterrence. []General deterrence. []Segregation from society. []Rehabilitation. []Fairness/justice. [/ol]Unless you are prepared to go against several hundred years of jurisprudence and political theory, it is a bit extreme to claim that justifications other than number three are a “fallacious and misguided way of thinking.”[/li]
[sup]1[/sup] See, e.g., Criminal Law & Its Processes, Eighth Edition, Kadish et. al., 67-80.
So you wouldn’t have had a problem with Guy-Paul Morin, in a moment of helplessness over his being endlessly railroaded by the justice system, hanging himself with a government-supplied rope?
Don’t forget David Milgaard while you’re throwing out examples of extreme exceptions to what we have to assume is a fair and just system.
Maybe we could offer this option to prisoners after it is made available to the general public, but not before. (Of course, we could make them all go to prisons in Oregon, I guess.)
You speculate as to how you might react under such circumstances; if the actual reality were your life however, there is a good chance you may not be in such a rush to die.
That, of course, depends on the ethical system of the individual in question. I would submit that it’s absence from any system of ethics represents a serious flaw in that system.
Not as egregious a flaw as unrestrained abuse of carriage returns, of course, but still pretty bad.
Maybe, maybe not. Who am I harming though if I feel that life behind bars is not worth living? Certainly people have killed themselves for worse reasons.
I realize there are practical considerations here that make this sort of thing difficult, but keeping someone locked up their whole life isn’t cheap, and if they want an out, I think we should find a way to give it to them.
Well, Senator Boisvenu’s daughter was abducted, raped, and murdered.
I don’t see any casual reference to this in here.
I’d be pissed too. Fuck the rest of the world if this happened to my daughter.
A free person’s suicide attempt might fail and the persons life can improved with therapy, an inmate serving life without parole will still serve life without parole after they’re rehabilitated.
I’d call letting someone on death row dying from self inflicted wounds mercy.
What if they’re REALLY into auto-erotic asphyxiation?
How strange, then, that the people who actually create and maintain the whole system of criminal justice refer to penal codes and penitentiaries. Are you suggesting that they are all being disingenuous?