I don’t profess to know anything about North American/Canadian gun laws, and have too little an understanding of the issues to comment with any authority or confidence. Apart from a brief departure featuring kangaroos, that I did grasp, much of the rest has frankly gone over my head although I have been trying to follow as best I can.
One recurrent theme I have noticed is the reference to mental illness, a subject I do feel able to comment on having been in psychiatric nursing for over twenty years. There appears to be an almost universal acceptance that the perpetrators of these murderous acts are mentally unwell. Well they must be, mustn’t they?
In my experience individuals who commit such acts can be mad, or
bad, and the repercussions they face as a result of their acts should be tailored accordingly. It is no more right to call for their instant destruction than it is to label them all as of unsound mind. Each case must be judged on its own merit. In the UK, and I suspect in the rest of the civilised world, there are tests to ascertain a person’s culpability in such cases. Here they are referred to as mental capacity assessments and are adapted to many situations, for example from determining whether a person in the early stages of dementia has the capacity or capability to manage their own finances, to whether someone is able to attend court and understand and participate in the process.
To take the example of this latest shooter, he will no doubt undergo a string of psychiatric assessments in order to ascertain if he is fit to stand trial. He will be asked if he took the actions he did in the full knowledge of what he was doing and it will be determined whether he had full understanding of the consequences of his actions. In the absence of any other underlying mental health diagnoses he will likely stand trial and be dealt with accordingly through the judicial system. If deemed mentally unwell he may, by order of the court, be committed to a mental health institution for rehabilitation and treatment. Whether or not he ever got out would be another matter. At least that would be the process here.
Whilst the incidents of atrocity appear to be on the increase, the dilemma about how the perpetrators should be treated afterwards is not new. A prime example happened here in the UK in the 1960s, when Myra Hindley and Ian Brady abducted, killed and buried five children on Saddleworth Moor. Both received life imprisonment, with Hindley dying in custody in 2002 having earned the title of ‘most evil woman in Britain’. I was very young at the time of the convictions, but as I understand there were many calling for reinstatement of the death penalty. In 1985 Brady was, some twenty years after the atrocities, deemed criminally insane and transferred to a high security psychiatric hospital. A case of bad, then mad? I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the population wanted them dead, but others argued they needed help, not punishment. These others, perhaps unsurprisingly, were not very popular and it would still take a brave man to put forward that argument today. But is it valid?
Either way it is not palatable for the parents and relatives of victims of such atrocities to have to contribute to the cost of care or detention of these people through their taxes. It is irksome to think their breakfasts are being paid for from the public purse, and even more galling when you understand that most perpetrators of such crimes are segregated from the rest of the inmates like child sex offenders are, for their own protection, meaning they have a relatively easy time inside prison. (In a previous role I visited several prisons. Sex offenders over here have their own wing, one particular one I visited had spacious cells with en-suite showers and patterned wallpaper, better than some hotels I’ve stayed in).
I’m not a pc tree-hugging do-gooder, far from it, and I do believe that people who commit these acts and can be demonstrated to have capacity for their crimes should get all that’s coming to them. But is it right to dish out the same retribution to someone who is mentally unwell? Those of us who decry the lack of mental health provision prior to such atrocities taking place should surely be demanding excellence in care after the event also? Isn’t that the civilised way?
I know it’s an emotive subject, but if we’re just going to say they’re all crazy and we should just lynch the fcukers, it makes little sense when we are showing so much empathy for them before they have done wrong. It also does little to address the stigma surrounding mental illness, from which one in four of us will suffer at some point in our lives.
Not at all sure what I’m saying here, just transferring a few rambling thoughts to the keyboard.
