POLITICAL CORRECTNESS KILLS

Theodore Dalrymple in the Spectator points out how the suicide rate in British prisons has exploded since the UK's abolition of the Death Penalty. He thinks the two are not unrelated and the reformers may be part of the problem:

"Until the 1980s, when the suicide rate rose, it was an offence in prison to harm yourself or to make a suicidal gesture. Unless the doctor considered that you had a bona fide illness that led you to act in this fashion, you were charged with wasting medical time, and lost remission. The abolition of this harsh-sounding regulation was replaced by a more 'caring' attitude, and conferred certain advantages in prison upon those who claimed to be suicidal, which resulted - as any sensible person would have expected - in a large increase in acts of self-harm, of which there are now at least 20,000 per year in our prisons. But the abolition of punishment for self-harm achieved its most important end: the gratification of the reformers' narcissistic urge to feel humane..."

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