In Killing time, Theodore Dalrymple, a prison doctor in the UK, makes the case that “caring” attitudes have increased the suicide rate in British prisons:
A former director of the prison medical service once opined (in private, not for publication) that in France no one cared if a prisoner committed suicide; indeed, such a death was regarded by the public as a net gain for society. In Britain, however, we pretend both to be shocked and to care deeply. This pretence is not entirely harmless, for it results in a lot of official activity; and, as we have come to expect, official activity has the opposite effect to that intended.In the 1980s, two measures seemed to coincide with the rise in suicide in prison. Until about 1986, the prison record of each prisoner who had ever attempted suicide was marked with a large red “F” (I can’t find out what the F stood for) so that the prison officers automatically knew who was vulnerable and could keep a special eye on them. For some reason, this simple system was stopped and was replaced a few years later by a form of much greater complexity for those deemed to be actively suicidal. The change represented the bureaucrat’s view that elaborate formal ways of dealing with a problem are always superior to simple informal ones. In a sense, this is true: they always give bureaucrats more work to do.
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.
The suicidal are now rewarded with various privileges that can include better material conditions, admission to the hospital wing (where the regime is easier), daily visits from nurses and “listeners” (prisoners deputed to allow fellow-prisoners to air their problems), increased medication irrespective of whether it is strictly indicated, and so forth. But in order to prove their bona fides as potential suicides, and to preserve their privileges, some prisoners feel obliged eventually to make a serious gesture. I have known prisoners who have been laughing and joking companionably with their fellow-prisoners attempt to hang themselves a few minutes later if told that their status as suicide risks was being removed. And such gestures sometimes go wrong.