# The ethics of force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 18, 2015, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039 "2015-02-18T21:32:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/41 "2015-02-19T17:37:27Z")
Add Egypt, Spain and Russia in the last decade. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/42 "2015-02-19T17:41:44Z")
Jailers have an obligation to keep their inmates alive and healthy so they can serve out the sentence that society has deemed they deserve. If they want to make their sentence even more miserable by forcing their jailers to strap them down and administer gavage, that’s their choice, but you don’t just get to decide that you want to die because you don’t feel like being in jail anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/43 "2015-02-19T17:52:01Z")
My state does not have the death penalty, nor will it allow an inmate to cause himself significant injury/death by volitional behavior such as refusing food and water. I’ve wrestled with this dilemma directly many times, and my overall conclusion is “These are some fucked up situations”. I do tend to come down on the side of not allowing those in the custody of the state to cause themselves permanent significant harm over temporary problems. I also come down on the side of allowing qualified patients to become DNR patients and expire of their illnesses in hospice care when there is a truly malignant process going on. I could say a **lot** more on this topic, but I won’t at this time. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/44 "2015-02-19T17:58:36Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Jailers have an obligation to keep their inmates alive and healthy so they can serve out the sentence that society has deemed they deserve. > > If they want to make their sentence even more miserable by forcing their jailers to strap them down and administer gavage, that’s their choice, but you don’t just get to decide that you want to die because you don’t feel like being in jail anymore. You forgot to preface the first statement with the proviso “In the USA…” in much of the rest of the world hunger strikes are allowed without force feeding. You second sentence removes the responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim. Equally, people under torture in Guantanamo obviously cruelly forced those good American soldiers and Psychologists to Waterboard, beat and otherwise torture them. Obviously the recipients fault, not the fault of the system carrying out the torture! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/45 "2015-02-19T18:00:03Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Jailers have an obligation to keep their inmates alive and healthy so they can serve out the sentence that society has deemed they deserve. > > If they want to make their sentence even more miserable by forcing their jailers to strap them down and administer gavage, that’s their choice, but you don’t just get to decide that you want to die because you don’t feel like being in jail anymore. Out of curiosity, did you just invent this justification for keeping prisoners alive? Because I have never heard it anywhere else, and I find it a pretty appalling justification. I can certainly understand the justifications for force-feeding based on sanctity of life and a belief that it’s in the prisoner’s best interests, but I would not want to be party to a nation that adopted your vicious view. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/46 "2015-02-19T18:20:45Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Maybe you are working on partial information. British prisoners have the absolute right to go on hunger strike; it is clearly stated in prison rules. > The reason that you do not hear too much is that death by starvation is not as newsworthy as prison staff force feeding prisoners. > > I can remember hunger strokes in Indian and Pakistani jails in the last couple of decades. No, like I said the last big hunger strike in the UK was in 1981, and Thatcher was castigated for allowing those ten men to die. If you force feed them- you are wrong, if you allow them to die- you are wrong. It’s a lose/lose. It’s not inhumane to force feed someone if done humanely, and like I said the \*\*United Nations \*\*and the **World Court** agrees. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/47 "2015-02-19T18:22:00Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Out of curiosity, did you just invent this justification for keeping prisoners alive? Because I have never heard it anywhere else, and I find it a pretty appalling justification. I can certainly understand the justifications for force-feeding based on sanctity of life and a belief that it’s in the prisoner’s best interests, but I would not want to be party to a nation that adopted your vicious view. Going on a hunger strike is morally equivalent to holding a shiv to another inmate’s throat and declaring that you’ll kill him unless they let you free. The fact that the life the inmate is threatening is his own doesn’t change the fact that the jailers have obligated to neutralize the threat he’s presenting. How, exactly, is it “vicious” or “appalling” to insist that prisoners serve out the time they have been sentenced to? If a prisoner doesn’t feel like being jailed anymore, should we just unlock the cell for him, since, hey, he has a right to self-determination and we’re being total buzzkills by harshing his scene? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/48 "2015-02-19T18:22:48Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Going on a hunger strike is morally equivalent to holding a shiv to another inmate’s throat and declaring that you’ll kill him unless they let you free. The fact that the life the inmate is threatening is his own doesn’t change the fact that the jailers have obligated to neutralize the threat he’s presenting. Using deadly force if necessary, right? This is totally absurd, and surely you must see that. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/49 "2015-02-19T18:26:08Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Using deadly force if necessary, right? One would hope it doesn’t come to that. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/50 "2015-02-19T18:26:57Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > No, like I said the last big hunger strike in the UK was in 1981, and Thatcher was castigated for allowing those ten men to die. If you force feed them- you are wrong, if you allow them to die- you are wrong. It’s a lose/lose. It’s not inhumane to force feed someone if done humanely, and like I said the \*\*United Nations \*\*and the **World Court** agrees. Can you provide the cite for the UN and World Court authorising force feeding against the client’s will. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/51 "2015-02-19T18:27:10Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > It is not the UN but the War Crimes Tribunal. > > There is no record of any Western state actually carrying this procedure out, except the USA. The _International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY_,\*\* is a body of the United Nations\*\*. It was carried out in the UK many times in the past-HM Prison Holloway, against hunger-striking suffragettes, they also used forcible feeding techniques against Irish Republicans during their struggle for independence. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/52 "2015-02-19T18:30:36Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Going on a hunger strike is morally equivalent to holding a shiv to another inmate’s throat and declaring that you’ll kill him unless they let you free. The fact that the life the inmate is threatening is his own doesn’t change the fact that the jailers have obligated to neutralize the threat he’s presenting. Let us analyse that. A person threatens to kill themselves. They fail but cause bodily harm. A person threatens to kill another person. They fail but cause bodily harm. Both cases are equivalent morally? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/53 "2015-02-19T18:38:57Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > A person threatens to kill themselves. They fail but cause bodily harm. > > A person threatens to kill another person. They fail but cause bodily harm. > > Both cases are equivalent morally? When the attempt is coupled with a demand, it is. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/54 "2015-02-19T18:39:42Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The _International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY_,\*\* is a body of the United Nations\*\*. > > It was carried out in the UK many times in the past-HM Prison Holloway, against hunger-striking suffragettes, they also used forcible feeding techniques against Irish Republicans during their struggle for independence. The cite you give is not approval for force feeding generally- read the whole story. It was threatened by a low level UN apparatchik, surrounded by conditions on the use coercion, never validated by any authority at higher level, never implemented. The court gave into his demands a few days later. It is equivalent to the pretendy military judges in the Guantanamo kangaroo courts claiming to make decisions over the validity of torture of the detainees there. And we stopped because we realised like the rest of the civilised world that it was tantamount to torture. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/55 "2015-02-19T18:41:21Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > When the attempt is coupled with a demand, it is. Not in any moral or legal system I know. Note I did not specify prisoner. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/56 "2015-02-19T18:45:38Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > One would hope it doesn’t come to that. One would hope it doesn’t come to a guard killing a prisoner to keep the prisoner from starving himself to death? Well, yes, I suppose one would hope that. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/57 "2015-02-19T18:58:00Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > The cite you give is not approval for force feeding generally- read the whole story. It was threatened by a low level UN apparatchik, surrounded by conditions on the use coercion, never validated by any authority at higher level, never implemented. > > And we stopped because we realised like the rest of the civilised world that it was tantamount to torture. I never said it was 'approval" for forcefeeding in general (and the High Court did say this was a specific occasion). But the High Court did rule- in general- that "\* the judges at the tribunal also noted that the body of law laid down by the European court of human rights did not view force-feeding as “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment if there is a medical necessity to do so … and if the manner in which the detainee is force-fed is not inhuman or degrading”.\* So, yes, if it’s illegal in the EU, the High Court said that they’d support that law, but there was nothing that made it “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment”. And you cant get a “authority at higher level” higher than that Court, which ruled that it **WAS NOT** Torture. So, stop saying it is torture as the highest World Court has ruled it is not torture. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/58 "2015-02-19T19:16:03Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I never said it was 'approval" for forcefeeding in general (and the High Court did say this was a specific occasion). But the High Court did rule- in general- that "\* the judges at the tribunal also noted that the body of law laid down by the European court of human rights did not view force-feeding as “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment if there is a medical necessity to do so … and if the manner in which the detainee is force-fed is not inhuman or degrading”.\* > > So, yes, if it’s illegal in the EU, the High Court said that they’d support that law, but there was nothing that made it “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment”. > > And you cant get a “authority at higher level” higher than that Court, which ruled that it **WAS NOT** Torture. So, stop saying it is torture as the highest World Court has ruled it is not torture. Whatever the World Court tribunal Not the higher court) ruled, it would have been illegal under European law to carry it out in Europe or under European jurisdiction. The World Court has no powers in individual countries not given willingly by that country. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/59 "2015-02-19T19:24:24Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Whatever the World Court tribunal Not the higher court) ruled, it would have been illegal under European law to carry it out in Europe or under European jurisdiction. The World Court has no powers in individual countries not given willingly by that country. Yes, and they said so. But they \*also ruled it wasnt torture. \* ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039/60 "2015-02-19T19:34:24Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, and they said so. But they \*also ruled it wasnt torture. \* Read the whole judgement and the restrictions listed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ethics-of-force-feeding-prisoners-on-hunger-strike/713039.md?page=4)