Coronial decision-making and the management, classification and conceptualisation of the finding of ‘suicide’

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper addresses some of the results from a large-scale-funded research project into the coronial conceptualisation and adjudgement of suicide, founded upon an ongoing dissatisfaction with the validity of suicide data. The research is based upon in-depth interviews with 32 coroners from all but one Australian jurisdiction and focuses upon the administrative, epistemological and ontological categorisation of suicide as a type of death. The coroners express a range of concerns over the options available to them in order to produce more defensible statistics. First, coroners generally expressed a dissatisfaction with the fundamental binary finding of ‘suicide/not suicide’, but see little point in expanding the administrative categories available to them Second, epistemologically, coroners are open to the introduction of a classification of ‘sub-intentional suicide/self-manslaughter’ as a way of dealing with the issue of intent. Finally, those coroners who have significant experience with Indigenous suicide– propose the abandonment/replacement of the category of suicide altogether, due to its ontological incoherence, and its cultural flexibility. The central conclusion is that, if more valid statistics of self-inflicted death are to be produced, at very least, coroners need more choices of finding than are currently available.