Nowadays, self-harm is often seen as a private act, a way to cope with negative emotions. This can be true, but it’s not the only reason why people may harm themselves. Motives can range from personal gain to public protests. I’ve been collecting documents and objects related to self-harm for a few years now, and some of them offer a glance at how disciplinary institutions – such as the police, the justice system, and prisons – have responded to self-harm across history and countries. The involvement of these institutions suggests that harming the self is sometimes also believed to harm society. Their responses focus on the consequences of self-harm rather than the reasons why.
The point here is not exhaustivity – there is no way to cover this topic in depth based on a few examples only. But each of these cases may illustrate a wider issue. They can serve as a starting point for reflection about matters which go beyond self-harm, such as consent, bodily autonomy, protest, and mental health issues.
When self-injury is criminalized
Currently, self-harm and mental health issues are approached from a medical perspective. But it hasn’t always been the case, and there were times when it was tackled with a more punitive perspective. Let’s not forget that even until recently, suicide was still illegal in many countries. It only ceased to be a crime in Sweden in 18641, Finland in 19101, 1961 in England, Wales2 and New Zealand1, Canada in 19721, and the Republic of Ireland in 19933! While self-inflicted injuries may not be as serious as suicide attempts, disciplinary institutions still occasionally respond to it.Our first case took place in July 2010 in Sweden. Early in the afternoon, two police officers arrived at an apartment in Kungsör. They were responding to a call about a man seen going in and out of an apartment, covered in blood. As the police entered the flat, they discovered a gruesome scene: the floors and walls in almost every room were covered in blood. The suspect was there, with another man who was lying on the floor. Both had extensive cuts on their arms and hands. Witnesses reported it was a ritual between the two men (according to the police report), but we now know the men had carved words and cut each other under the influence of drugs and alcohol. While not self-harm per se, it may be seen as a kind of self-harm by proxy: none of them directly inflicted the injuries upon themselves, but they requested the other to do so, perhaps because it was more practical for them. The police report claims one of the two men was arrested for “serious assault”, but that the charge was later dropped. Stefan Forsberg, the head of the preliminary investigation, explained to Swedish media Expressen4 that according to the law, one can only consent to minor assault, but that serious assault can never be consented. This surprised the two men, who were part of the Swedish Black Metal scene, and were not new to taking drugs and harming themselves. Sarcastically, one of them asked metal magazine and website Bardo Methodölogy5, 6: “What ever has the world come to when two friends can’t pop some pills, drink a few beers, and re-enact a couple of scenes from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the privacy of their own home?”
In this case, harm was criminalized because it was inflicted by someone else, despite consent. But another case, this time in the United States, shows that self-harm can sometimes also be considered illegal.
While incarcerated in 2021, an American inmate seriously harmed himself multiple times, causing permanent injuries. Self-harm in prison is unfortunately common, but in Louisiana where the events took place, it’s considered a crime punishable by up to 2 years in prison. He was charged with self-mutilation by a prisoner, which was later dropped. Though the story doesn’t end there: the inmate’s attorney filed a lawsuit, claiming the charges regarding his client’s self-injury were unconstitutional. According to him, he engaged in extreme self-harm because of mental illnesses and neglect from the prison’s staff and administration. Punishing him for symptoms he couldn’t help would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which protects individuals with disabilities from discrimination. The prison’s psychiatrist who treated him claims the inmate was using self-harm as a weapon. When a situation would make him angry or frustrated, he’d injure himself. According to him, his self-harming behavior couldn’t be prevented by any medication, the only way was to keep him under extreme watch and solitary confinement. We don’t know the outcome of the trial yet as it’s still ongoing.
Naturally, self-injury isn’t a behavior that should be recommended. But these two cases reflect on the right to bodily autonomy. If people have the right to make decisions about their own body, such as having the choice to have sex, get pregnant, or get a tattoo, why can’t people also have the right to harm themselves or not? And if so, is it fair to criminalize it, and based on what criteria? This is a complex issue. In the Swedish case, the severity of the injuries is what caused the harm to be against the law. For the American inmate, it was the location in which the self-injury took place. In both cases, factors that led to self-harm were also interpreted and perceived in different ways. Someone’s responsibility isn’t always clear, with substance use or mental illnesses potentially influencing a person’s behavior. But the very harm itself was also interpreted differently. From a consented, albeit atypical, form of entertainment to aggravated abuse for the Swedish case; and a symptom of mental illnesses to an act of protest to avoid negative situations for the inmate.
Self-harm to avoid negative situations
Self-injury to avoid negative situations isn’t uncommon in prison settings nor in the army. Most people have probably heard of such cases during World War I, during which some soldiers wounded themselves to escape from the horror of war. But even in 1914, this wasn’t a new phenomenon.
In France, after being abolished for a short period, conscription resumed in 1818. 20 year-old men were selected at random to serve the country for 6 years. This change obviously displeased some young men who in turn wounded themselves to escape military service. The authorities quickly became aware of this issue, and in 1820, they released a ruling that addressed voluntary mutilation. “[M]utilation is an act that should be reprimanded, to prevent that it becomes a means to escape obligations imposed by the law”, the ruling states.
More than a hundred years later, the issue persisted. One morning in November 1937 in Algeria, 22-year old soldier Ali informed a military officer he had accidentally injured himself while cutting wood with his fellow soldiers. His right hand was bleeding, a part of his finger was missing, and other fingers were slightly cut. He was treated at the military hospital, where a doctor concluded in his forensic report: “I think all the probabilities point toward a self-inflicted wound”. Ali refuted this accusation, claiming he was trying to cut a branch but accidentally hit his finger instead. Despite the injury, he didn’t scream in pain, and simply moved away from the group. But his explanation didn’t convince the authorities who believed the reason why he had isolated quietly was precisely to harm himself. “Nothing in his behavior could predict and explain his gesture until now. So far, since he denies having inflicted the wound himself, we cannot know the motive that made him do this idiotic gesture, unless it is greed under the form of a discharge with a pension”. Ali faced up to 5 years in prison for these charges. We’ll never really know whether his injuries were self-inflicted or accidental. The country was still under French rule, but he wasn’t exactly considered “French”. Ali was an “indigenous” – he had French nationality, but was deprived of basic citizen rights such as the right to vote, or to a fair trial. Perhaps he was being discriminated against due to him being an indigenous. Whether accidental or self-inflicted, this case reveals that self-injury was often believed to be deceiving.
Self-harm for profit
In her book Psyche on the Skin7, historian Sarah Chaney covers the increasing worry about malingering for profit in the late 19th and early 20th century. “The last few decades of the nineteenth century saw a rapidly increasing concern with the concept of malingering, as well as use of the term itself. […] Malingering had initially been described as a military phenomenon. However, it was the application of the concept to civilian populations that accounted for a large proportion of the increased use. This concern over civilian malingering has been explained by the rise of health insurance systems across Europe”.
Given the financial risk malingering could cause, differentiating self-inflicted wounds from accidental ones became important. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Doctor Sir John Collie wrote numerous books teaching about the many different ways patients could fake illnesses, skin conditions and wounds. In his book Malingering and feigned sickness, he explains “the malingerer must be seriously dealt with, for not only does he eat the bread of idleness, be he does so at the expense of the community, some of whom will resent, while others imitate, his vicious conduct”8.
“Sensational Charges of Self-Mutilation to Collect Damages for Traffic Accident Revealed”, titled a Los Angeles newspaper on June 15 19369. “Five Arrested Here in Million-Dollar Swindles”, wrote another one10. With the help of accomplices, the Jenkins couple inflicted injuries upon themselves to fake a car accident. In front of the district attorney, they had to demonstrate how they inflicted the injuries. The wife scratched her leg with a cheese grater, and the husband attempted to break his arm by getting it hit with a rolling pin. The couple used self-harm to deceive and manipulate, a concept that is still attached to any kind of self-harm, even when clearly caused by mental health issues.
Self-injury due to mental health issues is very different from self-injury to avoid work, to protest, or for fraudulent goals. But they also all have in common the involvement of disciplinary institutions. In the end, it’s not so much the self-injury itself that is considered an issue by these institutions, nor the reasons why it occurs. They pay little attention to factors that could influence someone’s behavior such as mental health issues, poverty, or harsh conditions at work or during war. What matters for these institutions is the impact of self-injury, such as financial loss, avoidance of work and duty, or severe injuries. Very often, punishment appears to serve as an example that could deter others from imitating such acts. The French ruling dealt with draftees’ self-mutilation to “prevent that it becomes a means to escape obligations”. John Collie also states that others may imitate malingering if it’s not punished.
References
[1] Lew, B., Lester, D., Mustapha, F. I., Yip, P., Chen, Y.-Y., Panirselvam, R. R., Hassan, A. S., In, S., Chan, L. F., Ibrahim, N., Chan, C. M. H., & Siau, C. S. (2022). Decriminalizing suicide attempt in the 21st century: an examination of suicide rates in countries that penalize suicide, a critical review. BMC Psychiatry, 22(424). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04060-5
[2] UK Parliament. (2015). The right to die and assisted suicide. UK Parliament. https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-parliament-2015/social-change/debating-assisted-suicide/
[3] Office of the Attorney General. (1993). Criminal Law (Suicide) Act, 1993. Irish Statute Book. https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1993/act/11/enacted/en/print
[4] Julander, O. (2010, July 4). Två män skar varandra med kniv efter film. Expressen. https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/tva-man-skar-varandra-med-kniv-efter-film/
[5] Göransson, N. (2020). Ofdrykkja. Bardo Methodology #6, 41-47.
[6] Göransson, N. (2020, September 30). Ofdrykkja interview. Bardo Methodology. https://www.bardomethodology.com/articles/2020/09/30/ofdrykkja-interview/
[7] Chaney, S. (2017). Psyche on the Skin: A History of Self-Harm. Reaktion Books.
[8] Collie, J. (1913). Malingering and feigned sickness. Edward Arnold.
[9] Sensational Charges of Self-Mutilation to Collect Damages for Traffic Accident Revealed; Participants Broke Bones; Cut Skin. (1936, June 15). Carroll Daily Herald, 1.
[10] Five Arrested Here in Million-Dollar Swindles. (1936, June 15). Illustrated Daily News, 3.
Exploring self-harm 