Assisted suicide is generally a topic that is met with mixed reactions. In Belgium, where it remains legal, a man serving a life sentence for rape and murder has been denied the courtesy of doctors snuffing out his lights by the country’s justice minister.

Despite advice from the doctors treating convicted rapist Frank van der Bleeken, whose opinion it is that van der Bleeken cannot control his violent sexual urges, the justice minister denied the man’s request to be euthanised.

In an interview last year van der Bleeken outlined his reasons for requesting that he be ‘put down’, as read on BBC:

I’m in my cell 24 hours a day. That’s my life. I don’t feel human here. What do I have to do? Do I have to sit here and waste away? What’s the point in that?

There may well be a simple solution here. If his urges cannot be controlled simply castrate the man, bring him over on prisoner exchange to Pollsmoor and see how the brothers down here in the Cape treat convicted rapists. My guess is he will long for the safety of his Belgian prison cell. There’s no place like home.