Before societies came into existence, human beings were once living in the state of nature. Homo homini lupus--A men is a wolf to another man--was the way how our ancestors lived a brutal, solitary, and barbaric life without any promised social order. However, since the creation of civil society, human beings created a new concept called 'crime' and began to label some conducts with such name. So, what kinds of behaviors are labelled as crime?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines crime as "an illegal act for which someone can be punished by the government". Britannica states that crime is "the intentional commission of an act usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined, prohibited, and punishable under criminal law". Well, although we all know these official definitions carved and sorted by linguists are absolutely accurate, allow me to present a more 'colloquial' version: crime refers to any conduct that harms other natural and legal person's possession, life, and physical/mental/personal integrity.
This definition makes perfect sense as other formal definitions did. Let's prove this by examining different types of criminal offense around the world.
- Homicide/murder : inarguably a crime since it takes away the life of other person
- Rape/sexual crime : also a crime since a considerable degree of a person's physical/mental/personal integrity is harmed
- Theft/robbery : damage to one's possession is absolutely a criminal behavior
- Kidnap/violence : definitely a crime as the victim goes through significant degree of damage
Then, keeping all these in mind, let's think of "suicide". In some countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Brunei, Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Malaysia, Cyprus, and Papua New Guinea, suicide is not only stigmatized but also labelled illegal. Furthermore, religious doctrines around the world often consider suicide as one type of sin. Debate about whether suicide must be considered illegal or not has continued for a long time and there still remains great deal of controversy regarding this topic.
Personally, I do not think that suicide is legally punishable since it does not fit into the definitions I have introduced above. It does not hurt other people nor their possessions. Suicide is one of the rare cases of our world where the victim and the offender are the same person and therefore, the dead person is the one and only person who went through a legally arguable damage.
Some may counterclaim that suicide is socially harmful due to its negative externalities toward other people and therefore must be punished under criminal law. However, there is a legal explanation that logically refutes this argument. In both European continental law and Anglo-Saxon common law, there are two big purposes of legal punishment. One is recovery of damage--that is, to compensate the victim by punishing the offender--and the other is clarification of social order--that is, to tell the other people that certain behaviors are wrong, punishable, and consequential and as a result preventing potential offenders/victims from acting wrongly. Suicide, however, does not fall under any of these two purposes: compensating the damage resulted from one's suicide is literally ridiculous and furthermore, although legal prohibition of suicide can lead to the decrease in number of additional cases, its contribution will hardly be significant since those who kill themselves do not have to bear any consequences established by law. I mean, who would stop because of the law that cannot do any extra harm to themselves? Thus, without any practical reasoning that can actually create some need to legally punish suicide, I personally think that suicide cannot be place under the types of criminal conducts.
But still, I am quite curious of the way how YOU think. Is suicide a crime? Or is it the last piece of freedom we human beings possess?