It's the prisoners who would be driving other prisoners to suicide. If assisted suicide were permitted in prisons, driving other prisoners to it would be a hobby of many of the prisoners. But probably the biggest problem with allowing assisted suicide in prisons is that the prisoners aren't really free to choose. To be free to choose, you have to be free.
Simply by not being free, there is already pressure toward suicide. Prisons have gone to great effort to remove to the greatest extent possible the means by which a prisoner might take their own life, simply because prison does induce suicidal tendencies among so many. I am pretty certain that you would be looking for a long time to find a prisoner who is permitted to have a length of rope in his prison cell as a personal possession. That is a means of suicide, and they are likely to use it.
And why would we give prisoners who are not free to make their own choices a choice that we deny to everyone else? If an incarcerated person has a right to choose suicide, then surely people who are free have the same right. If we are going to assist prisoners with suicide, then surely anyone else has a right to be assisted with suicide. It would make no sense to give prisoners the right to choose something that free people can't choose.
Simply by not being free, there is already pressure toward suicide. Prisons have gone to great effort to remove to the greatest extent possible the means by which a prisoner might take their own life, simply because prison does induce suicidal tendencies among so many. I am pretty certain that you would be looking for a long time to find a prisoner who is permitted to have a length of rope in his prison cell as a personal possession. That is a means of suicide, and they are likely to use it.
And why would we give prisoners who are not free to make their own choices a choice that we deny to everyone else? If an incarcerated person has a right to choose suicide, then surely people who are free have the same right. If we are going to assist prisoners with suicide, then surely anyone else has a right to be assisted with suicide. It would make no sense to give prisoners the right to choose something that free people can't choose.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.