Suicide Act 1961
|
|
| Long title | An Act to amend the law of England and Wales relating to suicide, and for purposes connected therewith. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60 |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales, except as regards the amendments made by Part II of the First Schedule, and except that the Interments (felo de se) Act 1882, is repealed also for the Channel Islands. |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 3 August 1961 |
|
Status: Current legislation
|
|
| Revised text of statute as amended | |
The Suicide Act 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It decriminalized the act of suicide in England and Wales so that those who failed in the attempt to kill themselves would no longer be prosecuted.
The text of sections 1 and 2 of this Act was enacted verbatim for Northern Ireland by sections 12 and 13 of the Criminal Justice Act 1966. The Act did not apply to Scotland, as suicide was never an offence under Scots Law. Assisting a suicide in Scotland can in some circumstances constitute murder or culpable homicide, but no modern examples of cases devoid of direct application of intentional or unintentional harm (such as helping a person to inject themselves) seem to be available; it was noted in a consultation preceding the introduction of the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill that "the law appears to be subject to some uncertainty, partly because of a lack of relevant case law".[1]
Suicide is defined as the act of intentionally ending one's own life. Before the Suicide Act 1961, it was a crime to commit suicide, and anyone who attempted and failed could be prosecuted and imprisoned, while the families of those who succeeded could also potentially be prosecuted. In part, that criminalization reflected religious and moral objections to suicide as self-murder. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had formulated the view that whoever deliberately took away the life given to them by their Creator showed the utmost disregard for the will and authority of God and jeopardized their salvation, encouraging the Church to treat suicide as a sin. By the early 1960s, however, the Church of England was re-evaluating its stance on the legality of suicide, and decided that counselling, psychotherapy and suicide prevention intervention before the event took place would be a better solution than criminalisation of what amounted to an act of despair in this context.
...
Wikipedia