‘On a knife's edge’: medical, police, and legal responses to self-harming protesters

Traditional liberal democratic theories of protest can readily account for protest violence against others or their property, and are quick to denounce and criminalize such actions. However, protests that involve self-harm are harder to frame; they neither engage the harm principle, nor threaten a sovereign state of ostensible peace. Under liberal legalism, capacitous and consenting protesters should not have their rights of expression interfered with in such cases. However, in England and Wales, legal responses to self-harming violence nevertheless emerge, not necessarily within a public order framework, but through a risk-averse, medicalized lens. Co-authored by a legal academic and a practising psychiatrist, this article argues that mental health practitioners, the police, and the courts engage in a ‘paternalistic pivot’ in self-harming protest cases, which undermines human rights protections that are ordinarily afforded to protesters who are not causing a threat to others or their property.