Legal Beagle: Suicide Reporting; or, The System Doesn't Work
42 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 Newer→ Last
-
For me the issue is the man with a protection order had a gun and killed his children, and why should that information be embargoed just because the gutless arsehole turned the gun on himself.
-
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
for a 'reiny' day...
Sp if the law is widely flouted and never enforced, why is it even on the books?
It's the New Zealand way,
you know, like abortion, psychoactive drugs, alcohol,
- enact laws that don't go far enough or do what they need to do to make sense holistically. -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Really?
For me the issue is...
....but it's not about you.
I'm guessing (hoping) you missed Graeme's last paragraph:I have opened the comments on this post. My preference is for any discussion to focus on the general issue. If you do feel compelled to comment directly on the death of Edward Livingstone, you can seek permission from the Coroner. Contact details are on the website. I would prefer that anyone who wants to comment directly on Livingstone’s death do so elsewhere, just know that if you want to do so legally, permission is required. Please do not publish anything illegal.
...and that having got that out of your system, you may reconsider, and perhaps think that while possibly personally cathartic, it wasn't as respectful to the author as it might be, or much of a contribution to the discourse, in fact it was needlessly provocative, and that you, like me, will be hoping a moderator deletes both our comments from posterity...
Russell?
Graeme? -
James Green, in reply to
In recent months, I’ve seen the Herald do something very interesting. When there’s a story involving a suicide they can’t mention, the article proceeds as per usual (“no suspicious circumstances”, etc), but at the end there’s a list called “Where to get help” with the contact numbers of various agencies such as Lifeline and the Suicide Crisis Helpline.
Assuming law change is not forthcoming, I appreciate this sleight of hand in contrast to the "[there were no suspicious circumstances] this death has been referred to the coroner", which always leaves a small margin of doubt in my mind that perhaps I'm not accurately reading between the lines.
-
I'm putting this in a separate post, in case Russell or Graeme think it's better moderated.
One of the things that I dislike about the current regime is that there might be some questions that might be worthy of public discussion, that are less able to be discussed (or I feel are less able to be discussed) because of these rules. For example: Are the rates of alcoholism and mental health issues that I anecdotally perceive in criminal defence lawyers acceptable, and what can we do about this? It's not the best example, but it's the one that springs to mind.
-
I think it says a lot about our Government that we have laws which require processes which are concealed/unclear and which if one manages to find out how to proceed, persists and follows up even when the time frame has been such that the immediate impetus has been lost, can still result in a refusal without need of explanation or justification. Graeme was fortunate to be able to go higher and to get a more rational response, but what does it say about New Zealand that these lengths are necessary to comply with the law?
-
tussock, in reply to
just because the gutless arsehole
That's not how that works, by the way. It's always nice to believe that people doing horrific things hold belittling character flaws, but it's not true.
It's a mental health issue. They're not well, or at least they weren't for that last minute. Most suicides are just something lethal being right there at a very bad moment for otherwise normal enough people: gun locks (and medicine and such put out of sight and away from where you spend time) save a lot of lives for that reason.
-
Here’s an example of an extremely complicated situation: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11260836
How do you report on this exactly? They probably did a pretty good job, and then at the end they have a million numbers for suicide to call. EVERYBODY (EVERY last person) at this boys school, including students knew how he died, and given they are the most vulnerable/likely to copycat it there’s almost no point in supressing how he died since they already know and don’t need a newspaper that nobody reads reporting it.
It is true that suicides often come in groups, as vulnerable people (usually young) see the reaction to others who have taken their life, but the thing is that they don’t learn through the media what happened to them in this day and age, they hear it through Chinese whispers at first, and then it’s just out there through social media.
A student from our school passed away this week over night, and by period one there were rumours flying around it was suicide, but sadly it was a severe asthma attack, so I made it clear to the students that they knew what had actually happened. But with texting, twitter, facebook, email… the role of the 6pm news, or newspapers in dairy’s that nobody reads is nigh on useless to that generation. Just cos we still look at it and worry about how it rolls doesn't make it worth 2 shits to the majority of the 4.1 million living in NZ in 2014 …
-
TracyMac, in reply to
Exactly my thinking. Frankly, I think this case is a pretty bad example for leading a discussion of reporting suicide, since the matter was actually a murder followed by the guy removing himself from any legal recriminations (or not, see further below).
When it's a murder/suicide, I do think it is in the public interest to know whether it was the fallout of some "family matter" (domestic violence, custody battle, other), addiction issue, and/or mental health issue. Classifying it solely as a suicide obfuscates the murder of presumably-innocent victims.
-
TracyMac, in reply to
It's not always a mental health issue, unless you classify all domestic violence or murders as arising from mental health issues. There might be an argument for that, but since our courts lock people up in prisons for murder more often then they commit them to mental health institutions, that's not how the law typically views it.
And this is why these situations should not have the suicide element preempting the proper reporting of the murder element.
Also, you're in danger of saying the reverse is true - that all suicides are due to mental health issues. Obviously the vast majority are, but some are quite rational choices in the face of terminal or other serious and debilitating illness.
-
Sacha, in reply to
.. and most mentally-ill people do not harm others. We get a distorted picture from media coverage, as the Mental Health Foundation's studies show.
-
william blake, in reply to
It’s always nice to believe that people doing horrific things hold belittling character flaws, but it’s not true.
There is nothing nice about infanticide.
The pathologies around this particular type of crime generally show narcissistic male entitlement with strong psycopathy aka gutless arsehole.
To ascribe this kind of behaviour to a momentary or temporary insanity is to ignore the kind of patriarchal society we are living in and how this behaviour is a response to many generations of masculine conditioning.
-
Moz, in reply to
nice to believe that people doing horrific things hold belittling character flaws, but it’s not true. ... aka gutless arsehole.
I'd describe that as a character flaw, personally.
I think the underlying problem is a desire to believe that normal people don't commit crimes. Unfortunately we have very good evidence that that is wrong. Crimes like rape and domestic violence are distressingly common, rather than being shocking merely by who in particular has been pilloried or defended in the media most recently. The shock is "famous person does X" rather than "someone does X", whether X is "nosepicking" or "rape".
There's also the slow social shift that follows many law changes, like the changes in recreational drug use that often lag law changes by a significant period. Or the persistent problem with sposual rape even after it's been made illegal.
Suicide is IMO part of that shift. Euthenasia is a perfectly reasonable thing to discuss, and can IMO have positive outcomes (and be a perfectly sane thing to want/attempt)
-
william blake, in reply to
in reply to Ian Dalziel.
‘For me the issue is.’ means I own what I say.
Respect for the author is implicit as a considered response and the issue is put forward in Edglers opening paragraph.
“Back in January, Edward Livingstone shot and killed his son and daughter, before turning a gun on himself, taking his own life.”
and I think it is a vital part of the discourse, Ian, embargoing, redacting or censoring information around domestic violence is not helpful.
-
here's a great example of a paper carefully stepping around the coroner
-
Bernadine Oliver-Kerby: New Zealanders need to openly talk about suicide
Each year more than 500 New Zealanders take their own lives. Each year more than 2500 others attempt to take their own lives and fail.
But is it really us as a nation who have failed?
That would be classified. How many suicides were a response to disaster? How many were to escape domestic abuse? How many were a response to rape? How many were due to failings of our justice system? How many were a response to financial issues? How many were in response to bigotry and bullying? How many were a response to preventable trauma? How many were a response to family breakdowns? How many were an escape from illness and debilitating circumstances? what role might the breakdown of our health and mental health systems be playing? How many of these might be attributable to poor governance? What were the actual circumstances of 500 deaths per year? With scant data it’s easy to theorise.
Rest assured, not a single one was an "ordinary hardworking New Zealander”.
-
Police ‘default’ mental health service as attempted suicide call outs jump 30 per cent
A 30 per cent jump in the number of attempted suicides handled by police is an indictment on New Zealand’s mental health system, the police union says.
Police responded to just over 18,000 calls coded as “threatens/attempts suicide” across the country in 2015-16, up from 14,000 in 2012-13.
Almost every region experienced an increase in such call outs over the last four years, with Bay of Plenty jumping 44 per cent and Auckland rising 16 per cent.
Canterbury, Southern and Tasman reported increases of 40 per cent, 43 per cent and 36 per cent respectively.
Attempting to make inquiries regarding the online services provided, the message above the Live chat widget at www.mentalhealth.org.nz reads:
We’re not available right now, but we’d love to chat another time. Leave us a message or try again during business hours (Mon-Fri, 9am-4.30pm). If this is an emergency, please call 111 or click on our ‘In Crisis?’ tab above for help.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.