Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

©New Straits Times (Used by permission)

SO rarely has Section 309 of the Penal Code been enforced that the deputy inspector-general of police can only recall one instance when it was invoked.

But all this could change now that he seems to be seriously contemplating activating this once-moribund statute which makes attempted suicide a punishable offence. This would be a grave mistake. In as much as the police, like everyone else, should be concerned about the rash of spectacular attempts at suicide, they should not act with misplaced zeal. The sad truth is that many more attempts at suicide are made in less public settings and never make the headlines. This is why it is vital to proceed with extreme caution if we are serious about developing an effective strategy to prevent suicide.

As it is, with suicide rates having risen by 60 per cent in the past 45 years according to one estimate, criminalising attempted suicide does not appear to have had much of a deterrent effect. Admittedly, this could well have been a consequence of the fact that it has been very much an idle letter of the law. Nevertheless, we are simply compounding the problem by punishing those who try to take their own lives. In fact, making them pay a fine or sending them to prison for failing to successfully execute their intention to die amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. While there is no simple answer to what should be done to arrest the growing problem, locking them up does not appear to be an appropriate solution when prison can make even the certifiably sane feel suicidal, and would undoubtedly worsen the disorder of the depressed.

Moreover, rather than view suicide as "not your normal crime", it should properly be addressed as a mental health issue. The suicidal need compassion and emotional support, not the strong arm of the law, and therapy and counselling, not time alone in our overcrowded prisons. This is all the more reason why the questionable statute on the books should not be kick-started but allowed to gather dust, or, better still, rendered a dead letter of the law. To be sure, repealing the law is no panacea. At the very least, however, it should no longer have a deterrent effect of a different kind from that envisaged by the law -- discouraging the vulnerable from seeking professional help. If attempted suicide were decriminalised, it would erase a legal stigma and remove a stumbling block in promoting help-seeking behaviour among those at serious risk of inflicting harm to themselves. You can’t control what another believes because no fellow human being can truly tell what is going on in the mind of another.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed