Criminalising Suicide: Yay or Nay?

September is suicide awareness month, and as much as we like to bury our heads in the sand and pretend like it doesn’t exist, shouting “God Forbid” and “Allah ya Kiyaye”, the sad reality is that it does exist; very much so in Nigeria.

However, today we are going to discuss the legality of suicide itself and the punishment of ‘attempted suicide’. Remember that old joke about imposing the death penalty on people who try to kill themselves but fail? I struggle to make sense of it.

To understand the legal perspective, we have to go back to history.

Up until sixty years ago, Suicide was seen as a criminal act. This is based on religious laws, both Islam and Christianity. “Self-murder” became a crime under common law in England in the mid-13th Century, but long before that it was condemned as a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church. However, for a death to be declared a “Felo de se”, Latin for “felon of himself”, an old legal term for suicide, it had to be proved that the person was sane. If proven, they were denied a Christian burial and instead carried to a crossroads in the dead of night and dumped in a pit, a wooden stake hammered through the body, pinning it in place. There were no clergy or mourners, and no prayers were offered.

And the punishment doesn’t end with death. The deceased’s family were stripped of their belongings, and they were handed to the Crown. “The suicide of an adult male could reduce his survivors to pauperism,” Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy wrote in Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England.

It is roughly the same in Islam. If death is determined to be by suicide, a Muslim is denied a proper Janaza. However, his manner of death doesn’t affect the Islamic distribution of inheritance. Islamic Religious scholars can shed more light on this, please. I claim no authority on this matter, ehe!

Presently, about half the countries in the world no longer treat suicide as a crime, but the other half still do, Nigeria inclusive. In most, it isn’t enforced in but there are still a few places that treat it with deadly seriousness.

I believe suicide is a moral crime, much like adultery. That is what religion says. ‘Attempted suicide’ is, however, where I have my misgivings. How can someone who attempts to take his own life be punished by serving jail time? Should we not be questioning what pushed them to attempt suicide in the first place?

Malaysia quite commonly prosecutes attempted suicides, usually resulting in sentences of up to six months’ jail. Singapore was similar but has just passed a law to repeal the crime. Saudi Arabia also tends to be severe; a man was given a month in jail and 60 lashes just for threatening to kill himself. It seems that a lot of African countries also still punish attempts. In Western countries, it’s a historical anomaly, although some US states that recognise common law crimes still have it on their books. The UK abolished it in 1961.

In Nigeria, it is currently an offence punishable by up to one year in prison, a fine or both. However, the Federal Government has taken a major step towards decriminalising attempted suicide in Nigeria, following the approval by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) of the position of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare on the matter.

The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, described the decriminalisation of attempted suicide as not only a legal reform but also a public health and human rights imperative, stressing that people experiencing mental health crises should receive care, support and appropriate intervention rather than punishment.

“A person experiencing a mental health crisis should be met with care, support and appropriate intervention, rather than punishment. Removing the fear of criminal sanctions can help reduce stigma, encourage help-seeking and create greater opportunities for timely intervention,” the Minister said.

The whole point is this: Punishment is counterproductive. Jailing or prosecuting someone who survived a suicide attempt adds legal fear and trauma to a person already in severe emotional distress. We are recognizing suicide attempts as a symptom of deep mental distress, such as severe depression, anxiety, or trauma, and this calls for human empathy and medical treatment instead of criminal judgment. When we decriminalise suicide, we bring about a shift in public health perspective, causing authorities to now treat suicide attempts as a medical and psychological emergency rather than a criminal offense.

Many doctors will tell you for free that people have wept in their clinics admitting to wanting to kill themselves. These are people in a type of physical pain and emotional hell that we can only imagine. A woman once admitted to taking an overdose of pills attempting suicide – should I then have reported her to the police or sent her to the psychiatrist for admission and proper management?

I think Nigeria has taken a step in the right direction. It was long overdue anyway.

So, the question: “Should suicide be legal?” is one of those questions that will get an “errr” before an easy “yes” or “no”. It’s an unfair question. Suicide is bad, and we don’t want to encourage bad things, abi? And if it’s allowed, isn’t that somehow encouraging it? But what does it mean to make it illegal, really? Deterrence logic falls apart when people are willing to go extra lengths to kill themselves.

Let us help these people, biko and allow the Almighty the ultimate judgement.