Description and processing of individuals found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder accused of “serious violent offences” (original) (raw)
Related papers
Behavioral sciences & the law, 2014
The majority of individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) in Canada spend some time in hospital before they are conditionally or absolutely (no conditions) discharged to the community by a legally mandated review board. By law, the decision to conditionally discharge an individual found NCRMD should be guided by the need to protect the public, the mental condition of the accused, and the other needs of the accused, especially regarding his/her community reintegration. At the time of this study, Canadian legislation and case law required that the review board disposition should be the "least onerous and least restrictive" possible for the accused. This means that, if there is no evidence that the person poses a significant risk to public safety, he/she must be released. However, the Canadian Criminal Code does not specify the criteria that must be considered when making this risk assessment. This leads to two questions. (1) What pred...
2006
This research paper does not necessarily reflect the policy position of the Australian Government. No. 334 March 2007 Although mental illness is widely recognised as a problem in modern society, it presents particular challenges for the criminal justice system. Research has shown that offenders have higher rates of mental illness than the general community. The Criminology Research Council commissioned a study to assess the level of screening and the instruments used across the jurisdictions by criminal justice agencies. Based on interviews and relevant documentation, the researchers found that, although assessment occurs in all jurisdictions and sectors, there is little consistency in the way offenders are assessed. As a result, the paper argues for a thorough, nationwide system of screening of all accused offenders taken into police custody, to identify those who require a comprehensive mental health assessment. Such assessments need to be repeated as an offender moves through the various stages of the criminal justice system. For there to be an effective and efficient response to mental illness, the authors recommend not only that assessments be shared between criminal justice agencies but also that there be ongoing dialogue between mental health and justice agencies. However, little will be achieved unless courts, police, and parole authorities are given training and resources to better meet the needs of the mentally ill. A more fundamental issue is why over-representation of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system occurs, and the authors call for further research on this key threshold issue.
Behavioral sciences & the law, 2016
In the Canadian forensic mental health system, a person found Not Criminally Responsible on account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) and given a conditional discharge returns to the community while remaining under the jurisdiction of a provincial/territorial Review Board. However, the individual can be re-hospitalized while on conditional discharge, for reasons such as substance use, violation of conditions, or violence. We investigated whether being re-hospitalized has an impact on the factors associated with the subsequent Review Board disposition. Persons found NCRMD from the three largest Canadian provinces who were conditionally discharged at least once during the observation period were included in the sample (N = 1,367). These individuals were involved in 2,920 disposition hearings; nearly one-third of patients (30%) were re-hospitalized after having been conditionally discharged by the Review Board. The factors examined included the scales of the Historical Clinical Risk Managemen...
Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being
In 2014, then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper passed the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act into law, which gave Canadian courts and Review Boards new powers to protect the public from particularly dangerous mentally ill offenders. The most controversial change to the law included the designation of the High-Risk Accused. Once designated by the courts as a High-Risk Accused, that individual is barred from leaving a forensic hospital except for urgent medical reasons. In this article, the authors assess the impact of the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act on the forensic mental health system in Alberta, Canada. The findings indicate that the legislation did not lead to any meaningful changes in the Alberta forensic mental health system in terms of absolute discharges and incoming persons found not criminally responsible.
Homicide Studies, 2015
The aim of this article was to compare the characteristics and outcome of homicide and non-homicide mentally disordered patients all of whom had been hospitalised. Seventy-four patients with a homicide conviction were compared with 521 convicted of a non-homicide offense. The former group were older, were more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia but less likely to have suffered from childhood adversity, and had less criminality. They also had fewer convictions during the follow-up. Little distinguished these two groups with both suffering from multiple disadvantages suggesting the need for ongoing care and support.
Characteristics of mentally ill offenders from 100 psychiatric court reports
Annals of General Psychiatry, 2010
Background: There is an increasing probability that the psychiatrist will, willingly or not, come into contact with mentally ill offenders in the course of their practice. There are increasing rates of violence, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders that are of legal importance. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the rates of different mental disorders in 100 court reports and to investigate the characteristics of mentally ill offenders.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2022
BackgroundThe public often perceives the insanity defense as a “get out of jail free card”. Conversely, several studies demonstrate the substantial control imposed upon these defendants. This study compares Review Boards decisions regarding people found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) to criminal courts decisions regarding convicted offenders for similar offenses in Canada.MethodDetention, using logistic regression, and duration under detention and supervision, using Cox regression, were compared between a cohort of 1794 individuals found NCRMD in three Canadian provinces (Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia) between 2000 and 2005 followed until 2008 from the National Trajectory Project and a national sample of 3,20,919 Canadians convicted of criminal offense from Statistics Canada's Criminal Court Survey.ResultsIndividuals found NCRMD are 3.8 times (95% CI 3.4–4.3) more likely to be detained than convicted offenders as well as 4.8 times (95% C...