should inmates be prevented from suicide?

Great Debates
21

Well, “impunity” means “exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm” according to dictionary.com, so if you discount divine retribution, it’s pretty much certain you’re exempting yourself from punishment and penalty if you off yourself. The Man can’t keep you down after your self-termination. Still, it’s also certain that you’re physically harming yourself if you commit suicide, though it might be a psychological release…

Hmmm… I have to conclude: I have no idea what it means to commit suicide “with impunity”.

Zagadka, this dig at the board is entirely gratuitous and stupid.

I don’t know what cdnguy meant with his question. You apparently do, and that’s fine. It might be clear to everyone except me. But it’s not a statement about mental illness or suicide. It does not explicitly state an opinion. Hell, it’s just a single sentence, a single question, and instead of giving an answer, you ask two additional questions, then make a silly comment about our collective ideas about psychological disease.

Sure, this place has got its fair share of typing monkeys, but what place doesn’t? I’m sorry if you encounter a few too many of our primitive cousins when you try to have intelligent discussions, but if you have an opinion, express your opinion. Don’t just spew some rhetorical nonsense while insulting the board, cause that just doesn’t lead anywhere.

To throw my own opinions into this: I think that it’s a mistake for society in general to assist its citizens in commiting suicide. I believe in a few exceptions to this rule, but my feeling is this: If a person is serious, truly serious, about ending their own life, they’re gonna find a way to do it.

It seems best to consider suicidal tendencies as cries for help. There’s nothing we can do for the people who take the plunge and end it all, and indeed in some of those cases, that’s for the best. But if our assumption is that incidents that are less than than a successful suicide demand treatment, we can avoid some of the tragedies of the kind Mr. Moto relates.

22

I believe this is the wrong way to view imprisonment.

A prisoner is not repaying any “debt to society”. How is society any better off when some guy has been in a cell for 5 years instead of 4 years? It isn’t. The prisoner has suffered for an extra year, but the only benefit the rest of us have gotten–except the few petty individuals who gain happiness from the suffering of criminals–is that a criminal has been off the street for another year. And if he’s dead, he’s off the street forever.

If that’s the best you’ve come up with, I think you need to give it a little more thought. :wink:

23

You don’t seem to know how real prison works, not surprising really since public interest of the actual reality is of little importance to the general public who regard prison as merely a dustbin of society’s ills.

Everyone seems interested in a final retribution, one that ties up all the loose ends nicely and leaves no mess to clear up, the public would like prison to be a nice neat solution, but prisons and the whole criminal justice system are not, nor ever will be that, since prison is just at one end of all of societies troubles and failures.
Perfect prisons still would never solve the societal problems that cause them to be necessary in the first place.

Lets imagine that suicide is common and enabled in prison.

This will not leave a nice neat clean and lemon fresh smelling solution, the incarcerated have relatives and contacts outside the system, and their deaths will have untidy effects on their lives. Explain, if you can, how this is a benefit to society.

As I noted earlier, although you might wish for the very worst offenders to commit suicide, the reality is that the most likely to do so are mostly the ones with the overwhelming majority of their lives in front of them, and those years will be mostly outside of prison, I can’t see how encouraging them to self harm will benefit society at all.

This suicide empowerment of prisoners will also create a certain atmosphere nd environment within prison itself, those who are not suicidal will have to live with the consequencies of fellow inmates offing themselves and the survivors will be released to society, I just do not see any benefit in that scenario either.
(and remember this is in an environment where there are already a huge number of low level mental and personality disorders)

Lastly, for younger offenders, the true effect of the criminal lifestyle of the persistant offender is brought home to them when they are housed in units with other prisoners who have been offending for very much longer.

What the younger offender sees, when he observes the fifty year old with a string of jail terms, is his own future, this is a very sobering thought to those younger offenders.

24

As someone who nearly attempted suicide on multiple occasions, during the darkest and most depressing period of my entire life, I am absolutely disgusted at some of the responses here. I am appalled that some of you are actually saying, “Look, if someone wants to commit suicide, we reall shouldn’t stand in his way.”

I am glad that some of you, at least, recognize the need to prevent these tragedies from occurring.

25

It’s a benefit for the same reason that the abandonment of whipping was a benefit: living in a civilized society is a good thing in itself. A civilized society does not torture people just because they’ve committed a crime.

I am not wishing for that. I expect that the ones who will be most likely to commit suicide are the ones who are suffering the most from being imprisoned.

26

I am disappointed that you see this need as something all right-thinking people automatically believe in, something that needs no further explanation or justification.

27

The statistics I’ve read do not bear this out. The majority of suicides are sentenced to over 8 years. The majority of suicides were convicted of violent felonies–crimes against persons. The majority of suicides, it appears, happen fairly early in the incarceration–after an average of 2 years.

And, of course, no one has suggested that anyone be encouraged to commit suicide.

But, in the interest of finding out the real crux of the matter, say that suicides will be limited to those who are either sentenced to life (currently 25-30 percent of suicides) or those on death row (I do not have any statistics for suicides on death row).

Now, such inmates won’t be freed. They will die in prison.

Should their suicides be prevented?

28

Just the mere act of saying to a prisoner that suicide is an option, that there is a strategy for enabling suicide is encouragement.

Either you try to prevent suicide, or you do not. This would apply to all persons, incarcerated or not.

There are just no degrees of such a policy.

We can all think of circumstances where we might make exceptions but how does society deal with all the grey areas ?

Trying to categorise those who might be allowed to commit suicide is too much like saying one is a little bit pregnant.

Lets have a few cites about the type if prisoner who is most likely to attempt suicide and take part in self harm, here are some.

http://www.mind.org.uk/Mind/Templates/Content%20(RelatedTopics).aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2FInformation%2FFactsheets%2FSuicide%2F&NRNODEGUID={00DF25BF-782F-4285-A531-5AC91876A61F}&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest#Suicide_in_prisons_

This states that young people, especially on remand (ie unconvicted) and the mentally ill are the most at risk, followed by serious violent offenders.

In fact the largest single group at risk of suicide are not even the convicted, but rather those who have been held prior to trial, or those awaiting sentence following conviction. Add this to the mentally ill, does a pro suicide policy in prison really look like a humane way for society to follow ?

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/publications/cr/council/cr99.pdf

So again, I’d want some very clear and definative debunking of this extremely authorative report.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/06/289831.shtml

Note also that as a percentage of the prison population, females are up to 3 times more likely to commit suicide, and bear in mind these are least likely to have commited violent offences and more likely to be on shorter terms.

It is no coincidence that prisons with the highest populations, thus being overcrowded, and prisons with least access to out of cell activity, such as work activity and education, plus those lacking schemes such as peer support groups such as Listeners(like Samaritans but prison based) these are the prisons that have the highest suicide rates. Female prisoners have specific problems to do with the type of prison they are housed in, the geographical location compared to their home(and family support)

Impoverished prison regimes and poor support are the main indicators of higher suicide rates, it follows then that it would be very easy to provoke suicide in prison by prison management and ultimately the responsibilty for insituting such prison regimes would lie with elected officials.

You elect those officials, do you think you can trust your politicians to govern wisely or perhaps concentrate on chasing votes ?

Once a nation has decided that it will dispose of its undesirables, it will not be long before that category of people is expanded.

There really is no discussion here, your personal freedom, and the welfare of your society depends massively upon safeguarding the welfare of even the most odious and undesirable of persons, or perhaps we should allow the physically handicapped to commit suicide, it wouldn’t be too hard to create the conditions to encourage them do to so, after all, they contribute little of any use to society, or maybe the mentally ill too - we could even make those decisions for them since they are not competant to do so.

29

And if I had been surrounded by people with your mindset during the times that I was contemplating suicide, I would quite likely be dead by now. Thankfully, I was not.

If you honestly don’t see why this needs no further explanation or justification, then I can only shake my head in dismay and be thankful that I had a different set of people around me during my period of great crisis.

30

I’m sure your personal experience and religious beliefs had a big impact on your feelings on this matter, but you must realize that not everyone shares your experience and beliefs. If you expect everyone to share your position already, and make no attempt to defend it other than smirking and sighing, you won’t make yourself or your position look very credible. “You’d agree if you were in my shoes” is a poor argument.

31

Mr2001

So you perhaps don’t think that empathy is a reasonable place to start from ?

You advocate assisted suicide for those who are suffering because of their incarceration, but you need to look at why they are suffering.

Stress, mental illness, lack of useful and purposful activity and separation from family are among those reasons.

All these can be addressed to a greater or lesser degree, you might be surprised to what extent.

Take away, or mollify, these reasons for suicide and you then have people who actually wish to continue living.

So I wonder what amount of effort you would feel is justified in trying to keep potential suicides alive, some, more, none at all, or even perhaps active recommendation.

Since you seem to support this idea of suicide collaberation, maybe we could have your point of view as to what your policy would be, and how perhaps you could codify it and prevent abuses.

Would you have an inquiry into every suicide death?

What would you do if perhaps those inquiries discoverd dubious practices ?

Would you have independant inspection bodies to oversee the system ?

Would you keep potential suicides who have written their wills among the general population or maybe have suicide accomodation set aside ?

I’d imagine you would need some specialist psychiatrists to determine state of mind, and if they felt a prisoner was not mentally competant to commit suicide, would that prisoner have a right of appeal ?

Would the relatives of the suicidal have right of access at the last moments ?

By the time you have installed all the necessary safeguards, you would have one part of the population that would have the right to commit assisted suicide, one could not contemplate non-assisted suicide in prison as this would mean tacit approval of wrist slashing, hanging and any other means to hand, whereas assisted suicide would mean access to drugs.

Once you have the right to assisted suicide, then you will almost certainly get a campaign group pressing for assisted suicide for those who had committed no crime and were suffering, surely they have more right to your compassion than a bunch of criminals.

This is exactly why you cannot have assited suicide in prison, unless you decide that society as a whole has a right to assisted suicide.

That would really look good in a political campaign now wouldn’t it ?

A life is only valueless if we as a society allow it to become that way. Yes it takes effort, yes it is difficult, and yes we do have to ask difficult questions of ourselves and our society, but although this is not easy, it is no justification for not doing so.

You advocate assisted suicide or somesuch, I really do not want to think about the kind of society you would lead us into.

32

I might note that the problem in this story isn’t that she was bad to kill herself–but rather not in informing her parents that she had severe depression. One can well imagine her father following suit on such a sight.
But so far as I am concerned, everyone who has a right to live, has an equal right to not live (i.e. to die.) This doesn’t mean that everyone will make the best decision in excercising this right–and there may have been several simple ways where the decision could easily have been avoided–but I suppose that that is just the way it goes.
Personally my view was always that if you don’t do it doing a backwards somersault off the empire states building with a girn–well then you’re missing the point. And really I think that that’s what we should be teaching people. instead of that it is just “bad and evil,” because then, if they’re suffering depression they’ll just feel worse for having such desires that they can’t control.

33

My first post to this thread was obviously facetious, but “debt to society” is a deadly-serious issue in criminal justice.

What is the point of putting someone in prison for life without the opportunity for parole? Simple: It’s one of the worst punishments we can think of. Punishment, not rehabilitation. The man on death row or the lifer is repaying a debt by suffering. This is retribution, pure and simple. Those who sentence a man to death, or to spend the remainder of his natural years behind bars, are looking to make that individual feel horrible pain, for vengeance, and to deter others from committing similar crimes (though we all know not even death works as a deterrent, in practice).

In my mind, if I had a choice between life w/o parole and lethal injection, I’d take the latter without hesitation. I cannot imagine what torture it must be to rot behind bars, amidst the detritus of society. The old are preyed upon in prison, I’ve read, and suffer cruelly at the hands of sadistic inmates. There are rapes, beatings, intimidation, etc. Pure hell. I can only imagine life in prison would warp the stablest of minds, and the desire to end such suffering by suicide seems a reasonable solution to the problem, under the circumstances.

Which is precisely why it can’t be allowed, according to those who wish to punish.

34

Sorry, no. Life sentences are meted out (in theory) to protect society from the worst sorts of criminals. And some of my patients are definitely not people who should ever see freedom again.

Not nearly as widespread, the exception by far rather than the rule. At least in my system, which has over 20,000 inmates. Frankly, most of the lifers get pretty habituated to the situation, and not terribly uncomfortable. 3 hots and a cot, guaranteed medical care, regular work. Living better than a lot of people out on the street. Sadly, some guys seem plenty happy to come back into prison.

Assisted suicide for painful terminal conditions? I can see that side of things. Not that I assist in it, but I can understand it. Otherwise suicide is the permanent solution for a temporary problem, even if you’re a lifer.

35

Now why would you think that? I care about relieving prisoners’ suffering; how is that not empathy?

I would offer them psychiatric treatment, and perhaps impose a waiting period, but I would not force treatment on them.

Sure. It’d be good to get the prisoner to express his desires on tape too, to prevent murders being covered up as suicides.

That would depend on just what dubious practices are taking place, who is practicing them, and why.

I think it’d be a good idea to have independent inspections for prison conditions in general, not just suicides.

I’m not sure. What are the drawbacks to keeping them in general population?

Absolutely.

Sure, I don’t see why not.

Well, legalizing suicide is a controversial issue. But you can guess which side of that issue I’m on, right?

The most important thing here is not whether that life has some value to the rest of society, but whether it has value to its owner. If someone doesn’t want to live anymore, the rest of us have no business demanding that he stay alive just because he has some value to us.

Exactly… and that doesn’t sway me one bit. If someone is barbaric enough to think it’s appropriate to keep criminals in cages for the rest of their lives just to make them suffer, why should I care what he thinks?

36

I believe whole-heartedly that nearly every person who has wanted to commit suicide would eventually change their mind, of their own free will, if only they were prevented from carrying through with the deed in a way that didn’t make them hate their “aggressors” more. I also whole-heartedly believe that people’s lives are theirs to do with as they wish. These two can come into conflict, as you might imagine. If the matter is very simple for you, I think you are either considerably biased by your personal attachment to the topic, or you are failing to appreciate that moral conflics can exist and their solutions might not be trivial and obvious.

37

The state, IMHO, has a compelling interest to keep prisoners alive for several reasons:

(1) To prevent lawsuits:
If people kept dying in prison, the relatives of those prisoners will start to sue. It won’t take too long for a lawyer to argue that the prisioner’s suicide wasn’t really a suicide or was “strongly suggested” but not completely voluntary. In addition, these same lawyers could argue (as others have earlier in this thread) that the prisoner wasn’t of sound mind when s/he made his/her decision. The state could be held accountable for numerous judgements against them.

(2) The state has the obligation to provide for the health and welfare of prisoners.
The state has legal custody of prisoners, correct? As such (much as I have custody of my children) they are required to see that they are properly fed, clothed, housed, etc. Since it is the state’s obligation to see to their general health, doing anything that is detrimental to their health (and suicide is generally deteremental, is it not?) would be a violation of the state’s obligations.

(3) Human rights abuses
As others have mentioned, if suicide were legal in prison, aren’t there situations where people would be “handed nooses?” Surely you can see a situation where a person is contemplating suicide and a “friendly” guard simply “pushes” them in the “right” direction? We would condemn this in an Iraqi prision, wouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t our prisioners be given the same protection?

(4) Potential future productivity of the prisioner
There is certainly the potential of prisoners to be further productive, both in prision and after parole/release. There a quite a number of cases of prisioners who have gone on to help in the prison system as counselors, advisors, etc. In addition, I’m certain that many prisoners can lead productive lives after being released.

Zev Steinhardt

38

This was a bit of a set up question, I must confess.

It shows that you have very little knowledge of the penal system in its practical aspects, maybe you are willing to learn.

The reason I asked this, is that any prison employee who has had to deal with suicide of inmates knows that when you get one suicide in a prison, you get copycats. This can soon build up into an opressive atmosphere, where regimes are locked down ever more, and more pressure is placed upon staff, which in turn puts more pressure upon inmates. The individual institution can build up a pretty unenviable reputation for suicide and this is a very difficult thing to turn around, it can take years and many deaths.

The point I make is that if you have decent standards in prison, good pastoral and peer support and good staff/inmate relationships, suicide rates fall, we have had two in ten years, both within a week of each other. Suicide in prison is preventable just as it is outside prison.

If a prisoner really wants to off themselves, there is little that can be done about it, but such prisoners are rare and succesful intervention is common.

Suicide is very rare in some prisons, and more common in others, and this is largely dependant upon external influences that affect the prisoners view of themselves.

I guess its possible that suicide could be a rational choice, but far far more common suicide is caused by temporary situations that can be addressed very effectively.

I cannot see why anyone would single out one tiny segment of the population and allow this group ‘right to suicide’ without making the ‘privelidge’ available for all.

Now if you want to put forward a case for euthanasia and the like, that is a much wider debate, but for one group of individuals ? - just seems out of step.

39

I do in fact support the “right” to suicide for everyone, though since most people are also not significantly impeded from doing so, it doesn’t seem like a huge discussion apart from euthanasia efforts which I completely support.

40

Do you really believe this is the only reason people get sent to death row or put behind bars for life? You don’t think punishment plays a role?