I suspect the real reason is to allow police to use their own discretion.
I deal with a lot of mentally-unstable people, and some of them are suicidal.
The thing to realize about suicidal people, is that they can be really dangerous to non-suicidal people.
"I'm not hurting anyone but myself." is a big fat lie.
I have friends that work for the railroad, and train engineers have to deal with folks that suicide by train. It's bad PTSD. In some cases, it may even cause the train to derail, which could injure or kill a lot of others.
Then, there's "suicide by cop." Those people tend to hurt a lot of folks, before they get their wish granted.
Not everyone just wanders off into the desert, or takes a bunch of sleeping pills (by the way, I invite anyone to ask the person that finds one of these "easy" suicides, how they feel about it).
And, then, of course, you have your suicide bombers, but they know what they are doing, and aren't telling themselves the "I'm not hurting anyone but myself." lie.
Let's be clear about what mcherm wrote, they wrote that attempted suicide is criminalized to protect the person.
That's very different from what you describe. Yes, some suicidal people do some very dangerous things that may harm (or risk harm to) others, but in general things that cause harm to others are already going to fall under some criminal statute. Consider someone parking their car on train tracks, potentially derailing it. That act itself would be criminal whether there was an attempted suicide involved or not. The attempted suicide is not the crime (or should not be), in the train/car scenario, it's parking the car on the tracks that creates a crime.
It makes no sense to criminalize attempted suicide except as a way to punish the individual, it does not help them.
You're probably right, but the law tends to have set ways of doing things.
Mental health restrictions are something that can be incredibly abused. The CIA and the NSA like to use "mental instability" as a way to discredit and sanction people that "stray off the reservation" -an awful term (why did they hire them in the first place, then, if they are so mentally unstable?). The Soviet Union was notorious for using it as a weapon against dissidents.
It is (and should be) very difficult to restrict the freedom of folks that have issues with mental health. I know of one chap, that I consider a close acquaintance, if not a friend, that is in very bad physical shape. He's about 400 pounds, can barely walk, if he falls down, he can't get back up, yet insists that he can live alone, with no assistance. If any one of us bring up the fact that he's basically a "dead man walking," he shuts us down, so we have to watch him do this to himself. I have asked social workers if there's anything we can do (we live in New York, which is quite a "nanny" state), and they say no. He's of sound mind (arguable), and no one can force him to have a home health aide, or put him in assisted living. He's quite likely to be found dead in his apartment, one day, and he seems fine with that.
But when someone wants to kill themselves, they very much could be a real danger to folks that don't want to go down with them -even if they swear they aren't. It's fairly important that the authorities have the power to intervene.
> Attempted suicide is criminalized in some jurisdictions for exactly that reason.
Ah yes, let's protect a suicidal person by charging them with a crime which they may eventually be able to expunge, but in the meantime will effect their livelihood. That will surely not create any problems which might complicate their lives and drive them further towards suicidal behavior.
It's my understanding that this is a crime that is never charged or prosecuted. Rather, if (attempted) suicide is a crime, it serves as a legal fiction that provides a structure for first responders to intervene. Police can then enter an office where someone is hanging out a window without a warrant, for example, because there are exigent circumstances (a crime in progress). Officers could also physical restrain someone trying to jump from a bridge and have a more straightforward justification for this after the fact. I think this is a societal good.
Have you seen any examples of suicidal people being charged or prosecuted for attempted suicide? I can imagine that this could have opportunities for abuse, but not ones that are qualitatively different from probable cause writ large.
> Rather, if (attempted) suicide is a crime, it serves as a legal fiction that provides a structure for first responders to intervene.
If I have a heart attack, does "having a heart attack" need to be criminalized for a police officer to render aid? The notion of criminalizing suicide attempts to protect a person is fundamentally absurd.
Wow. The fiance must have felt like shit for thinking calling the cops would solve anything.
That said, that man was not prosecuted for attempted suicide. He was convicted for possession of a firearm without a license, and acquitted for stealing his fiance's gun.
It's not the same, though, because what was requested was an example of someone convicted of attempted suicide. That man could have faced the same legal consequences if he had intended to use the gun for any number of other purposes.
