Prisoners will be allowed to request assisted suicide in Switzerland, prison system officials announced earlier this month.

This follows a request made in 2018 by a convict behind bars for life, which exposed a legal vacuum in a country that has long been at the forefront of pushing euthanasia.

Switzerland’s cantons, which implement prison sentences, have agreed “on the principle that assisted suicide should be possible inside prisons,” the Conference of Cantonal Departments of Justice and Police said.

Euthanasia is generally legal in Switzerland, with the only laws prohibiting assisted suicide being those performed with “selfish motives”. In the year 2014, a total of 752 assisted suicides (330 men, 422 women), compared to 1,029 non-assisted suicides (754 men, 275 women); most of the assisted suicides were of elderly people suffering from a terminal disease.[2]

Euthanasia organisations have been widely used by foreigners, in what critics have termed ‘suicide tourism’. As of 2008, 60% of the total number of suicides assisted by the organisation Dignitas had been Germans.