ABSTRACT
In the New Testament there is a correctional institution situation when a jailer was considering suicide because he thinks his prisoners have run away:
Over the centuries, civil and religious strategies have been enlisted to understand, cope with, and try to prevent this behavior. As hard as we as a civilization have tried, we remain as ignorant and ine§ective today as we were in the Middle Ages in our e§orts to understand and prevent suicide. In Medieval Europe, long before insurance company accounts and actuaries calculated life expectancy rates, the local lords devised a method they expected would prevent suicide. It included a tari§ upon the family of the departed that was equivalent to the amount of money the deceased would have paid in taxes to the crown had he or she lived. When this did not work the Roman Catholic Church got into the act. ey made it clear that suicide was a violation of the second commandment, “ou shalt not commit
murder.” To punish the deceased sinner, he or she could not be buried on church property (ASIST, 2003).
