Straffrättsligt ansvar för hets till självmord? - en straffbarhetsteoretisk utredning om möjligheten till särkriminalisering

Sammanfattning: In recent years, a number of cases of incitement to suicide on the internet and social media have been highlighted both nationally and internationally. In spring 2018, media reported on a Swedish case where a policeman gave a young woman instructions through text messages about how to best commit suicide. Since suicide and suicide attempts are not criminalized, the rules of complicity are not applicable. Thus, it is legal to instruct and to participate in another individual’s suicide. For this reason, the incident with the policeman was accompanied by neither criminal or disciplinary actions. The cases of incitement to suicide have led to calls for the possibility of prosecuting the instigator. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze how incitement to suicide is dealt with within the Swedish law. The thesis focuses especially on young people and young adults as well as on incitement on the internet and social media. By examining existing legislation, various forms of responsibility, and one of the principles that permeates the judicial practice, the thesis shows that the legal situation is relatively unclear and it should be difficult to impose an adequate criminal liability on an instigator. This is in particular due to the structure of the current legal provisions. The analogy prohibition in the principle of legality would probably often be violated when trying to include incitement to suicide under the wording of the legal provisions. Another important element of the thesis is to present principles of criminalization. This is because the thesis also aims to examine, from a perspective of criminality theory, whether it is justified to ensure criminal law protection against incitement to suicide. To incite a person to commit suicide should, according to most people, be regarded as reprehensible and unacceptable behavior, especially when bearing in mind the dire consequences an incitement might have. It is demonstrated in the thesis that further measures are necessary to ensure adequate protection for the victims. In this regard, it is noted that potential criminalization meets the principles of criminalization outlined. A supplementary criminal provision would probably contextualize and make visible these kinds of incitement and thus better reflect today’s society and reality.