Persons found not criminally responsible for crimes though mental illness are not released. In general they are held in secure custody until such time, if ever, they are safe to release. Many people do not realize that being found not criminally responsible leads to secure custody -- in a hospital rather than a prison.
Often those found not criminally responsible are held much longer than they would have been if convicted.
The criminal system is based on the concept of punishment for wrongdoing. Where someone genuinely has an illness preventing them from understanding the nature and quality of their actions criminal punishment is wrong -- separation from society and treatment for illness is right.
6 comments:
I agree that its a troubling finding. I've read a lot of the comments attached to articles about Vincent Li (Greyhound bus killer) and they seem to bear out those numbers.
I think that entertainment and a lack of knowledge about what it takes to be found NCR bears at least some of the blame. Its a pretty common theme of television shows and movies that someone with a 'weaker' mental illness like PTSD or something like that gets away with a crime. Thats vastly different from people like Li who were in the throes of serious psychosis that completely divorces them from the real world. I also don't think people appreciate that people found NCR are often held indefinitely in secure facilities. I don't practice criminal law but my understanding is that most criminal defence lawyers won't recommend going for a finding of NCR except for crimes with extremely long sentenceds because coming under the jurisdiction of the review board can be worse in some respects.
Yes, I know that many found NCR spend forever in the hospital, usually because they are more of a risk to themselves than to others. Still, Vincent Li is a shining example of how the justice system has forgotten past, present, and especially future victims. Li is a schizophrenic and was diagnosed and treated long before he committed his atrocity. He chose to go off his meds, something many mentally ill people do for a lot of reasons. By doing so he is responsible to some degree at least for his actions later. If he is stabilized on his treatment and released what guarantee can we have that he will always stay on his meds? Li has rights, yes, but society has rights, too. This is the one area where progressives seem more interested in individual rights and conservatives care more for the collective rights of society. It's perverse, maybe, but I am disgusted at times by the willingness of so-called progressives to risk other people's lives for their views on rights. I guess it is just a continuation of their willingness to use other people's money, too.
Nearly 4 in 10 voted Harper.
Enough said.
Li is a schizophrenic and was diagnosed and treated long before he committed his atrocity. He chose to go off his meds, something many mentally ill people do for a lot of reasons. By doing so he is responsible to some degree at least for his actions later.
This is a patently false bit of misinformation that has made the rounds on the internet. Li was NEVER diagnosed with schizophrenia and thus was NEVER prescribed meds that he could go off of before he killed Tim McLean. I'd have far less empathy for him if that were the case.
KC, if what you said was 100% correct I would agree that he has no culpability. That wouldn't change my opinion on his threat to the public outweighing his personal rights, but it is really moot. We know that Li was diagnosed with schizophrenia and refused treatment. I admit that he did not "go off his meds", but refusing treatment is almost as bad and again leads me to believe he must bear responsibility for his decisions. If his rights include refusing treatment for a disease well know to make the sufferer as risk to both himself and to others then the corollary for that right is the responsibility for the exercise of those rights.
My sources are not just rumours making rounds of the Internet:
He had one psychiatric admission to hospital. In 2005, he went to Ontario from Winnipeg in search of employment. He was picked up by police walking on the highway on his way back to Winnipeg and was admitted to William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke.
And
Li was admitted to a mental hospital in 2005, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to court testimony.
Doctors identified his auditory hallucinations and offered him medication, but he declined treatment at the time.
"Unfortunately, he appears to have left the treatment facility without permission," the judge said.
"Still, Vincent Li is a shining example of how the justice system has forgotten past, present, and especially future victims."
So locking him up in a jail will help his victim?
In any event, you have hit a key point, because you refer to the justice system. We do not have a revenge system, and the courts do not convict and sentence on the basis of how the victim's family wants them to act, even if the victim's family says that such a conviction and/or sentence will make them feel better.
The justice system seeks justice - for everyone. Part of that justice is the small matter of centuries of jurisprudence which dictates the offender must understand the nature and quality of his actions before he can be found guilty for them. It is unjust in the extreme to punish a man whose criminal acts are based on delusions in the same way you punish a man whose acts are deliberate and intended.
The mental health provisions of the Criminal Code dictate that the interests and safety of society are paramount in any decision that affects the patient's freedoms. You can expect that Li will be monitored his entire life.
As for the issue about refusing treatment - not at all uncommon. That is why we have laws that permit doctors to obtain mental health warrants. These warrants permit the police to arrest the patient and deliver him to a secure mental health facility, where he will be compelled to remain until the doctors deem him safe to return to the streets. The doctors could have done that with Li, but he would have had to present as being a danger to himself or others at the time he was at the hospital. You can be mentally ill and not a danger to self and others.
Perhaps the way to address this issue properly is for our governments to change that law to force anyone who is mentally ill to be detained in a hospital until they are properly medicated. Of course that will take a lot of money to build all those hospitals, but if doing so saves one Timothy McLean I would say that would be money well spent.
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