DUE:  No later than March 19
LENGTH: About 750-1,000 words
POINTS: Up to 10

Take a look at the following article. Then ask (assuming you're the warden):

1) Do people, any people, have the right to starve themselves to death?

2) Do we have a special obligation to people in prison to prevent
them starving themselves?
    
    a) Are people in prison fully able to give "consent?"
    b) Should we demand that people in prison experience the full
       weight of punishment rather than take the "easy way out?"

3) What are the pros and cons to allow inmates the right to starve for the
various stakeholders?

4) What, as a prison administrator (Dept of Corrections director, warden,
physicians) do?

==========

Inmates win right to starve: Ruling backs prison protest

By Michael Higgins, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter 
Lynette Kalsnes contributed to this report

September 7, 2002
Chicago Tribune, Sept 7 2002; page 15

An Illinois judge has ruled that two inmates at Pontiac Correctional Center
have the right to starve themselves to death in a protest over prison 
conditions.

The ruling is extremely unusual, legal experts said, since prisons routinely 
win the right to force-feed inmates whose hunger strikes become life 
threatening.

But Circuit Judge Harold Frobish of Livingston County ruled Thursday 
that the two inmates, John Barrell, 39, and Leon Snipes, 41, were competent 
to decide to die.

Both men reside in the prison's segregation units, where problem inmates 
spend 23 1/2 hours a day in solitary confinement, and both are likely to 
spend at least another 30 years in prison.

"I find these conditions represent mental stress in the extreme," Frobish 
said after a daylong hearing. "I find that if the defendants choose to 
die in these circumstances rather than live this way, that they should have 
a right to do so."

To decide the case, Frobish weighed the inmates' right to personal 
autonomy against factors such as the need for order in prison, the cost of 
health care workers to monitor starving prisoners and society's interest in 
seeing that inmates stay alive to serve out their sentences.

For now, a court order allows prison officials to force-feed the men at least 
until the state Department of Corrections decides whether to appeal.

Barrell, who was convicted of armed violence in Franklin County in 1991, has 
been in the facility for two years. Snipes, convicted of criminal sexual 
assault in Kankakee County in 1995, has been in segregation for three years.

Barrell has been diagnosed with a personality disorder and Snipes with a 
psychotic disorder, but Frobish said neither man was delusional. Frobish 
said the inmates live alone in a 5-by-10-foot cell with no TV or radio and 
no visits.

What Barrell and Snipes are trying to do demonstrates the need to re-evaluate 
how inmates, especially those with mental health problems, are treated, said 
Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

But Corrections Department spokesman Brian Fairchild said the methods used at 
Pontiac were legally sound and proper.

Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune

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