Stabbing in Brentwood-5 Dead, 1 Arrested

[KevanGuy]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Each family may have different thoughts about this, but there are certainly some that are completely outraged by all of it.

I'm sure there are but that shouldnt have any bearing on his treatment. Bringing up the families is an appeal to emotion.

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

I don't agree with this, the angry people just want a little resemblance of justice not 4 years in a club med with locks and happy pills. how about after the doctor's deem him safe for society send him to a minimum security prison for a few years.

But you're essentially saying that we should acknowledge that a person can commit violent acts and not be responsible for them, but after they have been treated for their illness, we should punish them for committing those acts nonetheless. Aside from making a few people feel a tiny bit better, what is sending someone like De Grood or Li to a minimum security prison going to accomplish?

All that will happen is that any treatment regime they are on will suffer and the next argument by the same people who want him incarcerated because of feelings will be that no other murderers go to minimum security and that they all receive long sentences, not just "a few years".

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

I don't agree with this, the angry people just want a little resemblance of justice not 4 years in a club med with locks and happy pills. how about after the doctor's deem him safe for society send him to a minimum security prison for a few years.

Sending him to a minimum security prison where they are NOT equipped to deal with his mental health issues is not justice.

[Wormius]

Are there really that many NCR cases that there is a concern for somebody playing the system? The only stat I could find was that 2 in 1000 cases of NCR applications



https://www.cbc.ca/doczone/features/...ly-responsible

Only 2 in 1000 cases end up with an NCR verdict. And of those, charges of serious violence only account for 8.1% of NCR cases overall.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Are there really that many NCR cases that there is a concern for somebody playing the system? The only stat I could find was that 2 in 1000 cases of NCR applications

https://www.cbc.ca/doczone/features/...ly-responsible

They also don’t reoffend upon release: “Serious, violent reoffence is almost zero
Contrary to the perception that NCR accused are dangerous offenders who are likely to reoffend, the study found that recidivism three years later of a serious, violent offence is a mere 0.6 per cent.”

https://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/m/featu...not-criminally

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by KevanGuy

I'm sure there are but that shouldnt have any bearing on his treatment. Bringing up the families is an appeal to emotion.

Sure. It's an emotional subject though. All violent crimes have such an aspect to them.

Thing is....don't victims HAVE to be considered in all this?

And let's be clear, the victims we are talking about here are the surviving family members/loved ones of the 5 who were murdered in cold blood. They have to live with this for the rest of their lives.

I really am not advocating one way or the other on this because its a very delicate and complicated scenario. I am just fed up with the justice system often ignoring the survivors of these things....who are often left out of any sort of consultations or even warning about what is to happen, until its already to late.

[OMG!WTF!]

So what if a family member agrees with the process de Grood has gone through? It's possible and even likely and even actually true in other cases. Should those families not get their way?

[puckedoff]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Sure. It's an emotional subject though. All violent crimes have such an aspect to them.

Thing is....don't victims HAVE to be considered in all this?

.

No. They don't.

Besides, DeGrood is a victim in this too.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Thing is....don't victims HAVE to be considered in all this?

Okay but how does that look to you? You have a panel of specialists who say he was in the midst of psychotic episode at the time, therefore NCR. Now those same specialists are saying he is safe to start reintegrating back into society. So, in your opinion, what's the next step? Do we keep him locked up solely on the basis of what the victims' families feel?

Say a guy with an undiagnosed heart condition suddenly has a heart attack while he's driving and smashes into a playground full of kids. Doctors then provide him with medication that ensures such an incident is unlikely to happen again. Do you still lock him up for 10 years if that's what the parents of the kids he killed want?

[Wormius]

Since we're in the midst of some "what-ism" here, do people think the case where the 86-year old man with Alzheimers who killed his wife should have been locked away? What's the difference between that case and any other? If his wife's friends or family were clamouring to have this guy sent to some "real" prison, is that cool?

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

No. They don't.

Besides, DeGrood is a victim in this too.

And his family.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Isn't alcoholism or drug addiction a disease?

Despite what 12 step programs tell people alcoholism and drug addiction are not diseases. They are cognitive behaviour dysfunctions. Back when Alcoholics Anonymous was started there wasn't many ways to say "not their fault" but calling it a disease was the way to get people to understand that those with addiction issues weren't culpable for their conditions. Of course, since AA is all about tradition they have never updated their claim of disease.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Despite what 12 step programs tell people alcoholism and drug addiction are not diseases. They are cognitive behaviour dysfunctions. Back when Alcoholics Anonymous was started there wasn't many ways to say "not their fault" but calling it a disease was the way to get people to understand that those with addiction issues weren't culpable for their conditions. Of course, since AA is all about tradition they have never updated their claim of disease.

That's not entirely correct. Substance-use disorders are listed in the DSM-5. It's still an irrelevant analogy.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by rubecube

That's not entirely correct. Substance-use disorders are listed in the DSM-5.

Substance use disorders are listed in the DSM; acknowledged. Are they listed as a disease?

[CliffFletcher]

Setting aside victims and retribution, there are legitimate concerns about public safety. Do we know enough about psychosis for a psychiatrist to declare with confidence that there's no chance of DeGrood having another violent episode? Even the experts don't really understand how and why these sorts of episodes occur in the first place, so how do we know the likelihood of them happening again?

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Setting aside victims and retribution, there are legitimate concerns about public safety. Do we know enough about psychosis for a psychiatrist to declare with confidence that there's no chance of DeGrood having another violent episode? Even the experts don't really understand how and why these sorts of episodes occur in the first place, so how do we know the likelihood of them happening again?

You're never going to get a 100% guarantee that someone will not re-offend, whether a person is found NCR or sent through the regular penitentiary system.

The stats that the CBC reported show that the recidivism rate for those found NCR on a whole is half that of the regular prison population (17% vs. 34%) and that the recidivism rate for a violent offence is 0.6%

If anything, these stats show that the treatments and interventions that are provided to people who have been found NCR should be employed within the regular system as well. It stands to reason that there is a good amount of the prison population that suffers from some form of mental illness (that doesn't rise to the NCR level) that would benefit from getting treatment.

I guess the question is, do we say that for those who have committed a violent offence (NCR or not), is their incarceration indefinite because there can be no 100% guarantee?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by llwhiteoutll

You're never going to get a 100% guarantee that someone will not re-offend, whether a person is found NCR or sent through the regular penitentiary system.

The stats that the CBC reported show that the recidivism rate for those found NCR on a whole is half that of the regular prison population (17% vs. 34%) and that the recidivism rate for a violent offence is 0.6%

If anything, these stats show that the treatments and interventions that are provided to people who have been found NCR should be employed within the regular system as well. It stands to reason that there is a good amount of the prison population that suffers from some form of mental illness (that doesn't rise to the NCR level) that would benefit from getting treatment.

I don't like this comparison to the regular prison system as the standard. The real comparison should be to an average person in society. We are saying that this person doesn't deserve punishment because they had no control. This is fundamentally different than we are punishing you for X that a conventional prison sentence is for.

Re-integrating a person after an NCR should have conditions placed on them until they are of no greater risk than the average person. Based on the stats in that study they are at a greater risk than the average person so having lifetime mandatory visits with medical personal and being required to follow their advice would be reasonable restrictions on liberty to ensure that their risk profile is similar to the average person.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Setting aside victims and retribution, there are legitimate concerns about public safety. Do we know enough about psychosis for a psychiatrist to declare with confidence that there's no chance of DeGrood having another violent episode? Even the experts don't really understand how and why these sorts of episodes occur in the first place, so how do we know the likelihood of them happening again?

It's easy to tell if he has a violent personality or not. Likely he does not and is the victim of a one off psychotic episode. Given normal circumstances he would not commit such crimes. That goes a long way to determining the likelihood of violence even when medication is not taken or given.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Well, I take his point - if you don't know why he had a psychotic break in the first place it seems unlikely that you can assess whether he's going to have others in future. If it's an NCR issue, "having a violent personality" is not what we're talking about. We're talking about completely losing control of one's ability to make decisions.

That being said, at 0.6%, the statistics are pretty tough to deny. The system appears to work incredibly well. That's enough for me to have some faith that this is the right decision.

[OMG!WTF!]

There are violent people with schizophrenia which makes it more likely they commit violent crimes especially when antagonized by hallucinations. If de Grood were like that he'd likely not get as much freedom so soon. So it is an issue of the underlying personality as well as the disease. I'm not sure how they determine the likelihood of a future episode like the last one. But some of that determination includes his historic response to anger, stress, intoxicants etc. Personality stuff. It's one quantifiable metric they have here.