Here we go again. (PoAC)
Aug. 5th, 2008 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageEvery time there's a particularly horrific and unexplained murder in Canada, a few things are brought up. I really do get tired of rehashing the same territory, so here are the answers:
1) Should we reinstate the death penalty for particularly horrific cases?
No. A life is a life is a life, and I don't want the state having the right to decide that some lives can be taken in cold blood by state-sanctioned murder. No amount of horror changes that. Furthermore, the vast majority of Canadians agree.
2) Isn't every murder indicative of mental illness? Isn't a criminally-insane plea really just a cop-out?
No. There's a big difference between a guy who hauls out a knife and beheads a stranger sitting next to him on the bus, and a guy who kills his wife when she tells him she's leaving him, or a robber who shoots someone in the course of their robbery. The latter two have motives that were obviously enough to trump the perpetrator's scruples about murder. The first has no motive, other than what's going on in the person's messed-up brain. They are two completely different things, and need to be treated differently. Yes, institutions for the criminally insane are better places to be, overall, than a maximum-security prison. That's because, having decided that someone is not guilty by reason of insanity, it would be hypocritical to punish them for the crime by putting them in a place that is hellish to live in. They're there for treatment and to protect society - not to punish them. And really, more sunlight and cleanliness and medical treatment and whatever else they get doesn't change the fact that they are not allowed to leave. It's still a prison - just one geared towards treatment instead of punishment.
3) If someone had had a gun on that bus, the victim would be alive and the murderer would be dead and everything would be much better!
No, no, and no. First, the victim was stabbed in his sleep; if he'd had a gun, the police would have found it on his dead body later on, because he had no warning that anything was about to happen. In fact, it would be far more likely that the perpetrator would have found the gun and used it on other passengers, thereby increasing the number of victims. If someone else on the bus had had a gun, they would have had to a) be aware of what was happening in time to stop it - a long shot at best in this case, since the victim was dead in just a minute or two; b) be trained to use it against people, without hesitation - in other words, cop or military, with experience; c) not catch anyone else in the friendly fire - again, highly unlikey in this situation, on a crowded bus; d) manage to avoid being shot by cops when they spot the gun and assume he's a perpetrator; e) avoid a manslaughter or murder charge when he kills a perpetrator who had not yet murdered anyone.
The most likely scenario is that the original victim would still be dead, the perpetrator would be shot and possibly killed, and a few other people would be wounded in the crossfire; it's fairly likely that the hero would end up dead as well, killed by the cops when they shot first and asked questions later.
4) We could have prevented this with better mental health care! The system is at fault!
We don't have enough information to make that call yet. The perpetrator is an immigrant, has been in Canada four years. If he's landed or a citizen, he'd have access to health care, but that doesn't mean he made use of that access. If he didn't realize anything was wrong with him, or if he realized it but didn't seek help, then the mental health system bears absolutely no blame in this case; you can't blame a system for not treating someone who didn't seek treatment. If, on the other hand, he sought treatment but was turned away as not sick enough, there may be a case to be made for blaming the system. But to jump immediately into blaming the health care system for its failure is premature at best. You don't blame the system for not preventing a heart attack if the patient never bothered to schedule checkups. And honestly, most of the time, you wouldn't blame the system anyway, because if someone is under treatment for a heart condition, it's entirely possible that the treatment won't work in time to prevent the heart attack that kills them. Even if he was under psychiatric care, if he wasn't taking his meds or the correct med or dosage had not yet been arrived at, he could still have had a psychotic break. In a nutshell, we can't cure everyone fast enough to stop things that are already in progress from continuing to their conclusions. It would be great if we could, and it's a goal to work towards, but we can't and it's ridiculous to expect that we could.
Sometimes senseless killings happen. That's just the way it is. We have to trust that our legal and healthcare systems will do their best to get to the bottom of it, but the fact remains that a young man is dead for no reason other than he sat next to a very sick man on a bus. This is not something we can stop from happening from time to time. It falls under the heading of "serenity to accept the things we cannot change."
1) Should we reinstate the death penalty for particularly horrific cases?
No. A life is a life is a life, and I don't want the state having the right to decide that some lives can be taken in cold blood by state-sanctioned murder. No amount of horror changes that. Furthermore, the vast majority of Canadians agree.
2) Isn't every murder indicative of mental illness? Isn't a criminally-insane plea really just a cop-out?
No. There's a big difference between a guy who hauls out a knife and beheads a stranger sitting next to him on the bus, and a guy who kills his wife when she tells him she's leaving him, or a robber who shoots someone in the course of their robbery. The latter two have motives that were obviously enough to trump the perpetrator's scruples about murder. The first has no motive, other than what's going on in the person's messed-up brain. They are two completely different things, and need to be treated differently. Yes, institutions for the criminally insane are better places to be, overall, than a maximum-security prison. That's because, having decided that someone is not guilty by reason of insanity, it would be hypocritical to punish them for the crime by putting them in a place that is hellish to live in. They're there for treatment and to protect society - not to punish them. And really, more sunlight and cleanliness and medical treatment and whatever else they get doesn't change the fact that they are not allowed to leave. It's still a prison - just one geared towards treatment instead of punishment.
3) If someone had had a gun on that bus, the victim would be alive and the murderer would be dead and everything would be much better!
No, no, and no. First, the victim was stabbed in his sleep; if he'd had a gun, the police would have found it on his dead body later on, because he had no warning that anything was about to happen. In fact, it would be far more likely that the perpetrator would have found the gun and used it on other passengers, thereby increasing the number of victims. If someone else on the bus had had a gun, they would have had to a) be aware of what was happening in time to stop it - a long shot at best in this case, since the victim was dead in just a minute or two; b) be trained to use it against people, without hesitation - in other words, cop or military, with experience; c) not catch anyone else in the friendly fire - again, highly unlikey in this situation, on a crowded bus; d) manage to avoid being shot by cops when they spot the gun and assume he's a perpetrator; e) avoid a manslaughter or murder charge when he kills a perpetrator who had not yet murdered anyone.
The most likely scenario is that the original victim would still be dead, the perpetrator would be shot and possibly killed, and a few other people would be wounded in the crossfire; it's fairly likely that the hero would end up dead as well, killed by the cops when they shot first and asked questions later.
4) We could have prevented this with better mental health care! The system is at fault!
We don't have enough information to make that call yet. The perpetrator is an immigrant, has been in Canada four years. If he's landed or a citizen, he'd have access to health care, but that doesn't mean he made use of that access. If he didn't realize anything was wrong with him, or if he realized it but didn't seek help, then the mental health system bears absolutely no blame in this case; you can't blame a system for not treating someone who didn't seek treatment. If, on the other hand, he sought treatment but was turned away as not sick enough, there may be a case to be made for blaming the system. But to jump immediately into blaming the health care system for its failure is premature at best. You don't blame the system for not preventing a heart attack if the patient never bothered to schedule checkups. And honestly, most of the time, you wouldn't blame the system anyway, because if someone is under treatment for a heart condition, it's entirely possible that the treatment won't work in time to prevent the heart attack that kills them. Even if he was under psychiatric care, if he wasn't taking his meds or the correct med or dosage had not yet been arrived at, he could still have had a psychotic break. In a nutshell, we can't cure everyone fast enough to stop things that are already in progress from continuing to their conclusions. It would be great if we could, and it's a goal to work towards, but we can't and it's ridiculous to expect that we could.
Sometimes senseless killings happen. That's just the way it is. We have to trust that our legal and healthcare systems will do their best to get to the bottom of it, but the fact remains that a young man is dead for no reason other than he sat next to a very sick man on a bus. This is not something we can stop from happening from time to time. It falls under the heading of "serenity to accept the things we cannot change."