ABSTRACT
David Lester has calculated the suicide rate on death row in the United States. The rate was 146 per 100,000 per year as compared to only 25 per 100,000 per year in prison inmates in general. This high suicide rate on death row is remarkable because inmates there are more closely supervised than in other parts of those prisons and in other prisons. Jean Baechler suggested that the term indirect suicide could be used to label the victim-precipitated suicides—behavior that is designed to provoke a homicidal reaction in another person. Baechler provided the example of a French murderer, Claude Buffet, who had demanded the death penalty, but who was instead sentenced to life imprisonment. It has been suggested that some murderers are trying to commit suicide, perhaps unconsciously, by getting the state to execute them, at least in countries where the death penalty is in force.
