Civil liberties, disability and mental health

[Tannin]

Not sure police vehicles driving through QVM would be a good look...

Why not?

Safer than horses.

I mean, when was the last time you saw a Toyota stealing a stallholder's apple.

[K]

...
*I understand that K’s focus here is broader than crime and punishment, but I’ll allow them to explain their thoughts on that further.

Yes, my focus has little to do with crime and punishment.

I think it's telling that the thread discussion has lurched to crime and punishment. The public believes in a false association between crime and mental health. (e.g. look at the article I quoted on the previous page.)


The police spokeswoman in the case discussed here said stuff about them fearing a carjacking or something like that. Does anyone believe that if police were present when a criminal with no mental health issues was about to carry out a real carjacking, they would have mowed that crim down with their car? I don't.

[watt price tully]

Not sure police vehicles driving through QVM would be a good look...

Why not?

Safer than horses.

I mean, when was the last time you saw a Toyota stealing a stallholder's apple.

[K]

"Disturbing video footage shows the man being allegedly hit by a police car before his head was stomped on by an officer.
...

Describing the incident in Epping as "deeply distressing and completely unacceptable," Professor McGorry called for the fast-tracking of findings of the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System.
...

Dr Senz believes the incident in Epping could have occurred at any hospital.

"It is the system's problem, it is not an individual hospital’s problem,” Dr Senz said. “We provide the best care we can. But [we] feel powerless to be able to fix it, because we can’t create a bed and we can't create more staff.”"

https://www.theage.com.au/national/bett ... 55x7h.html


I reckon The Age can safely drop the word "allegedly" unless the body being run down in the video was a brilliantly disguised stunt dummy.

[watt price tully]

The issue is not just the number of beds available and there isn’t enough. For people needing a bed and who are very unwell then treatment starts in the ED. For a psychotic, manic or manic psychotic person you need to institute treatment straight away.

The fact that this fellow wasn’t treated in the ED as well as he might have been reflects on the ED. Some people unfortunately have to be medicated with heavy duty meds and restrained for their & other people’s safety.

The questions which need to be asked include:
What are the mental health and risk issues
What was he given
What was ordered
When was he reviewed by mental health
What was the plan
How well was the plan adhered to.

Too many ED staff such as nurses don’t communicate well enough, don’t give meds as ordered, don’t use prn meds as needed.

We need to stop the infatuation with McGorry (who is great) but listen to many others such as Ruth Vine. The former is a specialist with under 25’s the latter is a brilliant psychiatrist, lawyer and great at Policy:

[watt price tully]

Mental Illness and the Law:

There’s been another case recently where I think the court has found borderline personality disorder to be mitigating in a case of a young woman who enticed a poor young Indian guy over and murdered him.

Of course we should give her the maximum sentencing option; perhaps we could actively consider her requests to no longer continue to live with a compassionate ear...ooops...

The diagnosis should inform the sentencing strategy but not influence the findings of guilt.

[stui magpie]

^

Was that case a couple of years ago? Chubby chick, hooked up with the guy on Tinder with the express intent of murdering him? Weird as a 3 headed 30 cent piece?

[watt price tully]

^

Was that case a couple of years ago? Chubby chick, hooked up with the guy on Tinder with the express intent of murdering him? Weird as a 3 headed 30 cent piece?

Yep, that’s the one. A determination came down in the last month or so where the diagnosis of BPD can be used for mitigation in deciding culpability (I think). I know I was pissed right off at the time (but that coulda been about anything)

More avoidance of responsibility in my view

[stui magpie]

Absolutely avoidance of responsibility.

if we're going to take the supposed condition into account they should be sentenced to a custodial sentence in a psych facility and if they suddenly recover, they get transferred to gaol and spend the rest of their sentence there.

[eddiesmith]

Any person who takes a life but gets mitigating circumstances due to mental health should absolutely be locked up for the same amount of time as any other person would under the same circumstances, if that's in a mental health facility instead of prison then fine.

But those people should not be allowed to walk freely again if they've got a disease that makes them kill people.

Btw is this the one in I think Canberra? They showed clear intent, premeditation and yet she got like 2 years or something pathetic?

[Tannin]

I think that there is a sensible argument for the view that an insane person can be released earlier than a sane person guilty of the same offence would have been, provided that they are certified cured and unlikely to relapse. (How? Who decides? How often do they get it wrong?)

However, I'm not entirely convinced by it. I'd need to hear it put more persuasively before abandoning my conservative default view, which is the same as Stui's and Eddie's. Do the crime, do the time.

[Pies4shaw]

Mental Illness and the Law:

There’s been another case recently where I think the court has found borderline personality disorder to be mitigating in a case of a young woman who enticed a poor young Indian guy over and murdered him.

Of course we should give her the maximum sentencing option; perhaps we could actively consider her requests to no longer continue to live with a compassionate ear...ooops...

The diagnosis should inform the sentencing strategy but not influence the findings of guilt.

She was tried for murder. The jury found that she was guilty of manslaughter. That lesser verdict is always available to a jury. Presumably, the jurors had sympathy for her appalling circumstances and history (although, from this distance, it is difficult to understand why that could have been). That happens sometimes.

In this sort of a discussion, it is important to bear in mind that - however much people might feel that judges are namby-pamby softies, they can't sentence someone as if they had committed murder when they are only convicted of manslaughter. When verdicts are entered on serious crimes, they are typically entered by juries, not judicial officers.

It is different, of course, with summary offences tried before Magistrates - but the violent offences that typically seem to interest people here are almost always tried in the Supreme or County Court, before a jury.

I can't find a report of the sentencing decision (the sentencing hearing was in April 2020), so I can't tell you what the Court thought about this. I assume that the sentencing judge has not handed down a sentence, yet (the defendant remains in detention, so there is no particular rush). I can tell you, though, that - in the usual sensationalising way - the media reports I have seen express something akin to shock/horror about the defence's request that the defendant serve 4 years in juvenile detention (something the sentencing judge described in his typically polite and respectful way as "unlikely" to meet with the Court's approval) but don't report the prosecution's sentencing submission, save to say that the prosecution wanted her to spend time in "adult" jail.

[K]

'[Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane] Patton said incidents such as the arrest in Epping hurt the reputation of Victoria Police.

"It is a fragile trust and confidence we have and we don’t take it for granted," he told radio station 3AW on Monday. "We continue to talk to all our members and say, 'Treat people the way you want to be treated yourself, the way you’d like your family to be treated.' "

Professor Kulkarni said the incidents involving police were the "tip of the iceberg". "There are many, many other sufferers," she said. "There is a larger proportion of people that are significantly and quietly struggling."'

(The Age)

[David]

I think that there is a sensible argument for the view that an insane person can be released earlier than a sane person guilty of the same offence would have been, provided that they are certified cured and unlikely to relapse. (How? Who decides? How often do they get it wrong?)

However, I'm not entirely convinced by it. I'd need to hear it put more persuasively before abandoning my conservative default view, which is the same as Stui's and Eddie's. Do the crime, do the time.

For me, I would like to see it be more or less the same principle. If you're "fixed", to put it bluntly, then yes, you should be let out. The same goes for if you're rehabilitated. The important thing is that you've a) done appropriate penance and b) no longer pose a threat to the community. Keeping anyone inside beyond that seems gratuitous.

[watt price tully]

One of the other issues here includes the lack of beds:

Lack of acute mental health inpatient beds;
Lack of forensic mental health beds;
Lack of drug and alcohol detoxification beds; and,
Lack of drug and alcohol rehabilitation beds

Mind you none of the above can treat a personality disorder although I would like to study the benefits of long term incarceration of say Donald Trump and see after 20 years if narcissistic personality can be successfully treated