Source: My brother who killed himself while residing in the "second best place" for a suicidal person to be.
Yes many people do commit suicide in jail. But most of those people are not known to their jailers to be suicidal and thus the proper precautions cannot be taken.
If the jailers know an inmate is suicidal (as Aarons would have if his lawyers told them) they are mandated by law to do everything in their power to prevent it. Right down to them being housed nude in a "rubber room" on 24/7 video surveillance.
Of course, it's extremely difficult to stop a truly determined person from committing suicide but the risk level is certainly much lower if that person is in jail and known to be suicidal than if that person is free in society.
That's par for the course these days.
> If the jailers know an inmate is suicidal (as Aarons would have if his lawyers told them) they are mandated by law to do everything in their power to prevent it. Right down to them being housed nude in a "rubber room" on 24/7 video surveillance.
I'm so glad to hear they had just the right environment for Aaron waiting to lovingly receive him. If my sarcasm is shining through then my apologies but I have a hard time dealing with all these well intentioned horror scenarios.
However horrible that might have been, it would have been better than the alternative...
You're arguing from a false dichotomy here, there are a lot more options than the ones that you see, and most of them are arguably a lot better than the ones you put forward.
Yes, there were other alternatives and jail certainly wasn't the best one. My point is simply that it would have been better than what ultimately happened, so given that, it's not so terrible the prosecutor suggested it.
I got what you meant, but what ultimately did happen is not relevant when you're speculating, what should have happened is and the prosecutors suggestion is moronic.
Part of the whole idea of having a justice system is that you do what's best for society. Putting otherwise superbly functioning human beings naked in a rubber room is such a spectacular waste of human potential that I really have a problem just contemplating such things, it is like having my head defiled.
If he were in a psychiatric hospital the treatment wouldn't have been much different. They also use rubber rooms and cameras, if necessary.
Outside of those two options, I'm not sure what you are implying could/should have been done. Was the prosecutor supposed to follow Aaron around 24/7 and physically stop him from hurting himself?
Step back a bit.
They charges didn't even need to be pursued. What "good" was ever going to come of it in any possible situation where charges were pursued?
I think the prosecution was simply supposed to not charge him at all because despite the fact that aaronsw's actions would have led to any other random computer geek being arrested with nary a second thought on HN, this computer geek is more deserving. After all, he's just trying to "do the right thing".
Hell, in fact the prosecutor should be ashamed of daring bring any charge against someone who only went out of his way to visit some other campus than his own, evade a 1-file-at-a-time control, evade an IP ban, evade a MAC ban, evade a Wifi ban, and hide his face while trespassing in an unlocked server room, where the only reason he even got caught at all was because he simply wouldn't give up. Next thing you know they'll probably start ticketing jaywalkers.
More simply: the ultimate fault may be (is) Aaron's, but that does not mean that it is "no one's fault but Aaron's" -- there is blame enough to go round.
Please explain this one to me. I would love to see what you come up with. I can think of about a thousand reasons why it isn't.
Now, Socrates of course offers a rational defence for his refusal to save himself so if we accept the refusal as an act of suicide we also accept that suicide can, at least in some circumstances, be the product of a rational train of thought.
Plato's accounts of Socrates offer us a superb platform on which to reason about this sort of thing. Helps to filter out a lot of the modern victim-blaming cruft that has built up over the past few centuries.
Man, what a leap. Instead we could accept that humans are not rational, which makes a lot more sense.
I mean, I don't agree with it, I think his values are misplaced, but I'd still say it is rational. As rational as any human reasoning could be, and really that is the only sort of 'rational' that is relevant. His argument was not the confused ravings of a mentally ill man.
So "people's" opinion of him and the idea of something being just or unjust - are the exact same thing according to the law of the Athenian state. The same goes for the contract. He does not disagree with Crito's argument that people would find it reasonable for him to flee given the chance - which makes it right under Athens' law. In the end, it is the law as interpreted by the court that determines what is lawful and/or right.
I think the rest of his argument does not make sense in this light. I do not see any indication that it made sense to him. Given his argument, and the attitudes of other Greek stories from that period - I would say that he simply wanted to die, wanted out, because people rejected him - not because he would be violating some ideal. Moving away was not an option since it would mean admitting defeat, it would mean saying he was wrong. There's more stories from that period involving suicide for social reasons or rejection.
I remember thinking like Socrates did when I was a child - that rules presented some absolute "background" standard of behavior that nobody could physically ever violate. Life taught me that I was simply misreading the situation, nothing more. I understand now that I remained stuck "believing" in this absolute law because it enormously simplified the world I had to deal with. I was perfectly aware it did not work, but I had to get into bad situations to get shocked enough to see reality for what it was.
1. Anyone who would kill themselves is not mentally well
2. We cannot allow you to kill yourself because you're not mentally well
The concept of physically restraining someone from committing suicide is completely antithetical to the idea of man being free. You cannot believe in one while advocating for the other.
Suggesting that you put someone in a "rubber room" is a bit ridiculous, but it's normal to put someone that is suicidal under suicide watch. Keep in mind that mental health can be a huge factor in someone being suicidal. In other words, they're not thinking straight, so it's fair to help them during that time.
Having the right to end your life is different than others trying to help you through a challenging time and show you that there are other ways out.
Using the mental health angle to deny someone their most basic right is fraught with issues. Mental health is often defined in terms of conforming to the standard behavior under various measures. We define mentally unhealthy as sufficiently deviant behavior and use that as a rationale for restricting that behavior. This is a thinly veiled attempt at forcing conformity under a scientific premise. Unless one can be demonstrated to be out of touch with reality, we have no right to physically intervene with someone exercising their right to self-determination. If you believe this right has caveats, then you simply never believed in it to begin with.
That's just as difficult to define. My argument is that there's no black or white answer.
If someone is truly determined to end their life no human can stop them, only delay them for a little while.
Tell that to all the Bradley Mannings of the world.
There are a lot of wonderful resources about the American prison system that you should explore. You could check out prisoners legal services to start and see the ongoing case histories they are dealing with to get a partial view of what life is like in prison in America.