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How many fewer crimes (and the avoidable deaths and suffering elsewhere) would we have seen without austerity?
MrsMC spent the night of the 2019 election writing a legal application to get a kid into secure accommodation costing thousands a week as a result of issues that would have been picked up and addressed if the local Surestart scheme had not been closed.
Investment in youth services, family support, education and housing would provide a solid and secure base for families and young kids to avoid going down the spiral that ends up costing us millions in health, justice, social services, and would put more people into paid, tax paying work. And it would free up resources to deal with the real outliers like the Stockport attacker.
But no one has the political will to set out 20 years of spending to save both cost and society in the longer term.
Erm... Not STOCKPORT.
Not STOCKPORT.
Yup, I keep reminding myself although scrolling up I see that at least once I have made the same mistake.
In Belgium, prisoners can opt for assisted dying, instead of serving their sentence, a whole new can of worms…
Seems perfectly sensible to me. In the case of Rudakabana that to me seems much more humane and pragmatic than keeping either keeping him in prison for decades, most probably in isolation, or waiting til he's murdered in some horrible way by another inmate.
What is will most likely to occur is a partisan argument about which political party is to blame.
Is my concern also, much like the Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal reared it's head recently but only so mud could be slung by those on the fringes, and rather than strong commitments to implement the Jay recommendations, the political points scoring resulted in government capitulation and another bloody round of inquiries...
It's not that people don't care who laid waste to mental health and social care structures, but in the long run we'll all benefit more from having them reinstated than arguments over blame.
It's good to know why failures happen, it's even better if those issues get fixed...
As I said in a previous post, there’s a very material difference between legal definitions and societal definition.
Yes but the legal and medical definition is what is important here. The any mass/serial killer is mentally ill whilst convenient and appealing isnt true.
The legal and medical definition is rather more complicated than your take on it and is important because it also limits would is available to authorities in the past. If there isnt something specific to treat then options are limited and you cant really section someone on those grounds.
Admittedly using hindsight locking him up for the various offences in the past would have probably saved the society as a whole since I doubt he would have gone through his sentence without attacking anyone and hence extending it indefinitely
In Belgium, prisoners can opt for assisted dying, instead of serving their sentence, a whole new can of worms………………
That's not exactly true. Your quote prompted me to do a bit of Googling. Seems ANY Belgian citizen can opt for assisted dying, if they are suffering because of an incurable condition. Usually that means a physical condition, but it can also mean psychological conditions.
Seems up to a couple of thousand people a year choose to do so. There seems to be one prominent case of a prisoner opting to do so - Frank van den Bleeken. He was granted permission but this was later rescinded. So Prisoners can't opt for it just because they don't want to serve a long sentence, but only if they meet the same criteria as any other Belgian citizen.
waiting til he’s murdered in some horrible way by another inmate.
Can we drop this codswallop that prisoners who can't abide nonces and child murderers, and will "take care of them" in due course?
Ian Brady did 20 years in prison and another 30 years in secure psych, and died of natural causes.
It’s difficult to gain any sense of perspective at that such an young age. More so if you’re going down the narrow reality-tunnel of organised religion.
The best option is to make psylocybin legally available to anyone over the age of 18.
And make it compulsory for any political or religious leaders to undergo DMT therapy every six months.
If only Jimmy Saville had been dropping acid back in the day…
Seen a couple of unconfirmed rumours that he may have had his first taste of unpleasant prison life. Oh dear, what a shame, hopefully the next 19,000 or so days are the same
Ian Brady did 20 years in prison and another 30 years in secure psych, and died of natural causes.
I think Ian Brady was extremely lucky, for example Peter Sutcliffe was attacked, quite seriously, multiple times, and his victims weren't children.
The suggestion from former senior prison staff is that Rudakubana will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
I dunno but I guess that if you are a lifer with plenty of time on your hands hatching a plot to slash Rudakubana's face with a sardine tin lid, or gouge one of his eyes out with a pencil, might represent an interesting challenge.
I know a prison officer. And while they will do there utmost to protect prisoners it’s really not s easy as it seems. And it really is reality that if cons want to attack/knife/maim etc it will happen.
And I am one glad it will happen in this case !!
The legal and medical definition is rather more complicated than your take on it
What do you think the "legal and medical definition" of mental illness is, exactly?
What do you think the “legal and medical definition” of mental illness is, exactly?
Unsurprisingly its complicated and so I would stick with his defence didnt go for that line. Its certainly more complicated than "did the defendant know what he was doing, and if so, that what he was doing was wrong". Maybe you can show the legal definition which supports that? Or I you might be in that rare category of being someone who assessed him either before or after the crime and with a liberal approach to privacy but I am going for not.
In which case we have the problem if he wasnt found deficient after the crime exactly why should the authorities have erred on the side before?
Unsurprisingly its complicated
Does it exist, this "legal and medical definition" of mental illness?
it is more than possible, this tragic event would never have happened.
Is there any evidence of that?
Yes. Multiple referrals to prevent and calls to the police
Why it wasn't prevented is a different question and it may well have been very difficult but chances were missed no doubt at all
Does it exist, this “legal and medical definition” of mental illness?
Good question. Perhaps one to ask for those announcing he is mentally ill and so something should have been done prior. I am surprised you havent been challenging them?
Short of that we end up with the fact like with many things it is complicated and so best left with the professionals. That it wasnt found as something to be used in his defence after the fact suggests it is unlikely to have been identified prior.
It's very similar in Scotland too. A quick google and there are a plethora of official sources, or reputable easy-read versions of offical sources.
In the UK, the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) defines a mental disorder as a disability or disorder of the mind.
Diminished Responsibility
The defendant must prove the following four elements:the defendant was suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning
if so, whether it had arisen from a recognised medical condition
if so, whether it had substantially impaired the defendant's ability either to understand the nature of their conduct or to form a rational judgment or to exercise self-control (or any combination)
if so, whether it provided an explanation for their conduct: section 2 Homicide Act 1957 as amended by section 52 Coroners and Justice Act 2009
any mass/serial killer is mentally ill whilst convenient and appealing isnt true.
To make a point, for exactly the reason that has ensued I didn't say legal and medical. I said legal - and that is broadly contained in the McNaughton rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%27Naghten_rules
labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong
and SOCIETAL - what would the general public understand as 'insane', which to me stretches to my own belief that while he may have known what he was doing was wrong surely a sane person doesn't do those sorts of things.
I didn't make reference to any medical definition of mentally ill; I'm aware that so many people in prison or the justice system suffer from mental illness of different types but that doesn't automatically infer criminal insanity - far from it. As you say, his defence didn't include it as defence (in the end he pleaded guilty anyway)
You can be mentally ill and not do the things he did (statement of obvious, clearly!); you can be mentally ill AND still perfectly capable of passing a McNaughton test.
it is more than possible, this tragic event would never have happened.
I don't understand how it is "more than possible" that this would never have happened. Why this belief that the risk was incorrectly assessed based on the then available evidence?
And where is the proof that they could have stopped Rudakubana becoming a deranged killer? Apparently his father stopped him at least once but he just carried out the killings on another day.
I don't get the impression that Rudakubana was in two minds over whether he should be a psychopathic killer and had someone talked to him they could have got him to change his mind, he seemed very determined. Although I am very happy to corrected someone qualified in such matters.
personally the only way I can think that the referrals could have stopped him would have been if they had responded by locking him up indefinitely.
As I said previously some people seem to think that someone other than the killer is always also to blame. I believe that sometimes no one other than the killer themselves is to blame. And this horrific case looks like being an example of that.
The only society which could stop all such horrors ever happening imo would be akin to the 1984 scenario, which is neither desirable nor attainable.
personally the only way I can think that the referrals could have stopped him would have been if they had responded by locking him up indefinitely.
what does prevent do to stop realistic terrorist threats? (I genuinely don’t know) but it seems if the system has known you are a risk to society for 4+ yrs, you’ve gone to a school you were excluded from assaulted people with a hockey stick whilst carrying a knife, and admitted you took a knife to school with the intent to use it, and your specialist teachers bringing you work to do at home regularly attend with the police - then maybe that level of serious should have been treated as seriously as terrorist suspects who would have been kept under watch? I’m not a fan of locking young people up for stupid crimes but this doesn’t sound like it was “he was always a bit odd” it’s much more “every warning sign was there”.
what does prevent do to stop realistic terrorist threats?
I really don't know but the police appear to be very certain that Rudakubana's obsession with violence was not driven by ideology. There is apparently no evidence that he was "radicalised".
Now I can understand the logic that through reeducation and engagement someone can deradicalised, ie have their ideology challenged and changed. After all if they have embraced an ideology then it seems reasonable that they can go on to then reject it.
But I really struggle to believe that someone with homicidal intent and an extreme obsession with all forms of violence can somehow be "cured".
I would be interested in any examples of where a homicidal psychopath was successfully cured though, and it was done as an outpatient - otherwise we are getting back to locking up people before they have even committed a crime.
some people seem to think that someone other than the killer is always also to blame. I believe that sometimes no one other than the killer themselves is to blame
Agreed.
Hindsight is often just too easy and doesn't reflect the myriad of pressures on those tasked with making assessments in real time.
I would be interested in any examples of where a homicidal psychopath was successfully cured though, and it was done as an outpatient – otherwise we are getting back to locking up people before they have even committed a crime.
So you know he is a homicidal psychopath? Interesting as i have not seen that diagnosis
As for locking folk up before they committ a crime. Happens all the time. One of the criteria for detention under the metal health act is "danger to others"
what does prevent do to stop realistic terrorist threats? (I genuinely don’t know) but it seems if the system has known you are a risk to society for 4+ yrs.....etc. (snipped for brevity)
I think (IANAL so don't get right into semantics) Prevent is the badge for a reporting scheme that then creates activity (supposedly) based on what is found, but it's 'got teeth' because being a member of a terrorist organisation, or even perhaps holding terrorist views is something that they can be detained for if necessary. From Met Police site - "protect vulnerable people from being exploited by extremists"
Being obsessed with violence or serial killers is not, to my understanding. Plenty of people (Univ researchers, crime writers, documentary makers...) could also fit the category of searching for and accessing some of this material, maybe even 'an obsession'.
Not even sure if a single individual looking terrorist stuff up on their own technically meets the criteria. So in days where we don't have resources in policing or mental health, seems like there were flags and opportunities that were missed - but not sure Prevent would have been the intervention based on my understanding of their guidelines. 'Not a potential terrorist at risk of being radicalised, not our problem'
The only society which could stop all such horrors ever happening imo would be akin to the 1984 scenario, which is neither desirable nor attainable.
I think is a valid point. Sometimes the price of freedom is the risk that those freedoms are abused. Easy to say as an impartial observer, less easy if your daughter has been stabbed to death or blown up by a bomb.
The key point from what I read is when he stopped engaging with the mental health team. Easy to say with hindsight, and I'm sure/hoping patients are critically reviewed at that point - does their behaviour suggest that left without supervision they may be a danger to others? If yes, then sectioning needs to be used - subject as ever to there being space and resources to cope.
I think that's the way CMH is supposed to work - but just like every other public service it's been gutted beyond the point of failure by cuts:-(
I really don’t know but the police appear to be very certain that Rudakubana’s obsession with violence was not driven by ideology. There is apparently no evidence that he was “radicalised”.
exactly, that’s the “controversial” point. It seems like had his motivation or associations been “terror” related then there would have been departments with the interest, motivation and power to *try* to disrupt him. Because they couldn’t attach the right label, every part of the system seemed to say “not our issue”.
Now I can understand the logic that through reeducation and engagement someone can deradicalised, ie have their ideology challenged and changed. After all if they have embraced an ideology then it seems reasonable that they can go on to then reject it.
your confidence in that seems remarkably high. I’m not saying it never happens, but I suspect that turning around entrenched views using logic is much harder than you make it sound.
But I really struggle to believe that someone with homicidal intent and an extreme obsession with all forms of violence can somehow be “cured”.
cured might be too far, but prevented from carrying out, able to redirect or manage their difficulty etc all sound like potential paths, and if not, then just like terror suspects monitored so closely that actions like ordering a taxi in a fake name and leaving the house wearing a mask would get you stopped and searched.
I would be interested in any examples of where a homicidal psychopath was successfully cured though, and it was done as an outpatient – otherwise we are getting back to locking up people before they have even committed a crime.
He has committed a number of crimes previously. He didn’t go from innocent wee boy to crazed serial killer in one move. In fact it looks like he first came to the attention of prevent when he called child line asking about killing someone - almost like at 13/14 he knew his desire was a problem and he wanted help. It sounds like every time he came to the authorities attention they concluded “well he’s not Al Quieda and he’s not pals with Tommy Robinson, so he’s just another teenage boy with an interest in violence, nothing to worry about”. “We” take away (or very seriously restrict) access to the internet from some of our most serious sexual predators to stop them needing to be kept in custody indefinitely. Without unfettered access to the internet he’d have found less to feed his imagination for violence, more difficulty in planning and the final stages of putting it into practice. It might be easy to blame the parents - but it seems one of the occasions they tried to restrict access to a computer the police got involved.
If he is mentally ill (and you called him a psychopath) then the state has the power to section him for public safety.
personally the only way I can think that the referrals could have stopped him would have been if they had responded by locking him up indefinitely.
Indefinitely assumes that once someone is so intent on a course of action that they have been referred that there is no going back? Is that based on evidence? Lots of people get detailed under the mental health act and released again, lots of teenagers get involved with the criminal justice system and then mature and calm down. I dont see why indefinitely was inevitable BUT I’m not sure why indefinitely means it would automatically be wrong.
As I said previously some people seem to think that someone other than the killer is always also to blame.
nobody is suggesting that the blame should be shouldered by anyone else - but if we have safeguards intended to stop attrocities, and they didn’t work because it was obvious that he was a danger but not the right kind of danger, it is entirely appropriate to ask if we need to fix the gaps.
I believe that sometimes no one other than the killer themselves is to blame. And this horrific case looks like being an example of that.
he won’t be the only teenager harbouring fantasies of killing other children for “fun” rather than ideology.
The only society which could stop all such horrors ever happening imo would be akin to the 1984 scenario, which is neither desirable nor attainable.
i think if he’d quietly lurked in his bedroom his whole life watching crazy shit on the internet and then suddenly one day flipped I’d be with you. But it *seems* that there was plenty of warning.
There seems to be one prominent case of a prisoner opting to do so – Frank van den Bleeken.
15 other prisoners also requested an assisted death in Belgium, including Geneviève Lhermitte who was euthanised last year. Its not just Belgium, 3 prisoners in Cananda have been euthanised (a further 8 have requested it) see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8742296/ and as far as I'm aware its a moral quagmire....................
In Canada you must have a terminal illness to ask for MAID and mental health is not a criteria so they must have been incarcerated with a terminal illness. Belgium i am not so clear on the criteria but i am fairly sure mere incarceration wpuld not be enough
Be very wary where you take your data on medical assisted deaths from. There are a bunch of evangelical supposedly Christian outfits pumping out distotions on this issue
edit. Thats a good source quoted tho
Agreed.
Hindsight is often just too easy and doesn’t reflect the myriad of pressures on those tasked with making assessments in real time.
How many other Rudakubanas have been deterred from carrying out attacks? How many are currently being monitored, assessed, analysed? How many have family and associates that could act as early warning? How many haven't?
All pertinent questions that will never be answered, but will be conveniently forgotten about when the armchair public enquiry by Social Media is in full swing.
Hindsight is often just too easy and doesn’t reflect the myriad of pressures on those tasked with making assessments in real time.
All the more reason to be open and transparent. A failure doesn't mean it was deliberate. Errors and mistakes happen.
However the culture of trying to downplay or plain withhold information cedes control of the situation to ideologically driven, bad-faith actors who will undoubtedly use it to push whatever bullshit narrative suits their agenda.
Transparency is the only way lessons can actually be learned and reduce the interference by the Griffins etc al of the world.
I'm not sure how many situations we need to make this clear.
So you know he is a homicidal psychopath? Interesting as i have not seen that diagnosis
No, I know next to nothing about Rudakubana, there is only so much that I can read about this particular case. With any horrific cases involving children I refuse to read the details.
I am purely speculating that he might be a homicidal psychopath plus I was making a more general comment about how the threat from homicidal psychopaths should be dealt with.
In the same way that you are speculating when you claim, without providing any evidence at all, that it is "more than probable" that he could have been stopped. I am basing my speculation on comments made the police and the huge amount of evidence that they collected.
What are you basing your speculation on - the comments made by politicians and those desperate to blame someone other than just Rudakubana?
Transparency is the only way lessons can actually be learned and reduce the interference by the Griffins etc al of the world.
I broadly agree, although having all of the methodology laid bare would possibly help more organised terror perps to avoid setting off alarm bells.
But, to me, that would mean withholding only a small part of the information. So, in the most part, I am agreeing with you.
How many other Rudakubanas have been deterred from carrying out attacks?
This is a very good question. The idea that all horrendous crimes can be stopped is not feasible. Even if you have a system in place which is 99.99% successful horrific crimes will still sometimes occur.
The fact that they happen once in a decade or whatever, in a population of sixty odd million, is not necessarily a sign of systematic failure, as some seem to automatically assume.
How many other Rudakubanas have been deterred from carrying out attacks?
That would probably require a lot of cross checking but almost impossible to ascertain due to GDPR.
Heres some prevent stats:
Here are some statistics about the Prevent program:
Referrals in 2022–2023: 6,817 people were referred to Prevent in the year ending March 31, 2023
Channel cases: 9% of referrals were adopted as Channel cases
Channel consideration: 16% of referrals were considered for Channel support
Not suitable for Channel: 82% of referrals were deemed not suitable for Channel consideration
Signposted to other services: 79% of referrals that were not suitable for Channel consideration were signposted to other services
You'd then have to figure out where all those cases went and what interventions (if any) occured.
Agreed, transparency helps reduce mistakes and allows lessons to be learnt. Though as humans, we will continue to make mistakes, especially when under pressure.
15 other prisoners also requested an assisted death in Belgium, including Geneviève Lhermitte who was euthanised last year.
Ahh.. a few more than I found in my brief Googling. Still not a lot though and just 1 who has actually been allowed to go through with it? Apparently between 2002 when it became legal, and 2023 there have been 33,000 euthanasia procedures in Belgium. including (it seems) one prisoner. Seems she met the requirements of any other Belgian citizen to request this. She was seriously ill and it was at her request.
So rather than this being prisoners having their rights taken away, it seems it's a case of prisoners having the same right as other Belgian citizens. It certainly doesn't seem to be a case of judicial execution by stealth. I know you weren't claiming that, but saying "In Belgium, prisoners can opt for assisted dying, instead of serving their sentence" is a little misleading.
In Canada you must have a terminal illness to ask for MAID and mental health is not a criteria
Yet. They've voted for it, but kicked the can down the road to 2027 to implement it. Maybe it'll go away, maybe it won't.
On one stw thread people are bemoaning the cesspit that is social media and on this we have people wishing harm to a boy (he was a boy when he killed & injured those poor people) who clearly had mental health issues that weren't dealt with properly by the authorities and was further lead down an awful route facilitated by social media, seems the state can't kill him but wishing physical harm & fear from other prisoners is okay 🙁
I think Ian Brady was extremely lucky, for example Peter Sutcliffe was attacked, quite seriously, multiple times, and his victims weren’t children.
Ian Huntley has been repeatedly attacked in prison. Mark Bridger (killer of April Jones) had his throat and face slashed. There are probably others but I'm not about to go searching the internet for examples. Huntley was even awarded legal aid to launch a compensation claim after one of the attacks.
on this we have people wishing harm to a boy
I applaud your moral concern but I doubt it's widely shared. It's a tragic case of the failure of our society to prevent this sort of thing but at the end of the day his actions and the outcomes massively outweigh any other consideration. It will be an interesting case for criminal psychologists and other professionals but beyond that I think he's forfeited the right for anyone to be concerned with his welfare.