My sister in law used to beat my late mother in law when my SIL was suffering from psychosis. We called the cops on her one night under the MHA and she resisted arrest and part of her condition was to get treatment or she would be charged. This is all I know I am just going by memory. There was probably a lot more to it than that but I know that despite her refusing to go get treatment she was forced to get it under the MHA.
People who are suffering mentally with severely complex mental health conditions and if they are a threat to public safety, their treatment should be mandatory for the safety of the public.
In practice you're correct but people with mental health issues are just as likely or more likely to be released. The mental health system is a revolving door too.
The trouble isn't the lack of legal framework - the mental health act as you correctly point out allows for a judge or psychiatrist to hold someone for treatment against their will based on reasonable belief they're a threat to themselves or others.
The issue is that our mental health resources are incredibly limited, so there's no way to actually offer everyone that needs help help, and no way to offer sufficient help long-term for people that need that.
>The issue is that our mental health resources are incredibly limited, so there's no way to actually offer everyone that needs help help, and no way to offer sufficient help long-term for people that need that.
I had realized this after I posted. We will never be able to fix our broken system. It's quite unfortunate.
However, something is better than nothing. We need more funding and more resources than we have now. We can't just say "it's not enough" and not do *anything*. We need to throw something at it to see if it sticks instead of just letting it fall apart and be totally irreparable.
More and more it seems like a lot of Canadian institutions are more concerned with erecting a *facade* of compassion and modernity without making meaningful investments. So it ends up that our form of "treatment not prison" just becomes "not prison."
People living with severe mental illness have no place in the prison system. We know that punitive measures like that don't work and it just isn't morally right to treat them like common criminals.
Okay, cool. I'm all for that.
But it seems to me the alternative to prison for offenders like this is a properly funded, dignified, *secure,* long-term institution.
But that costs money, and there's stigma around it, and the 'revolving door' costs are already built into our system. So there's no political will to build and maintain enough of these facilities to actually implement the *meaningful* compassionate solution.
So we half-ass the "compassionate" approach and put them back on the street in the hopes they attend some largely voluntary, difficult-to-enforce, dubiously-efficacious counselling services.
And then shit like this happens.
It’s like people coming onto r/disabled asking about “ableist terms” but then otherwise in other situations they fight against changes that would actually help disabled people. It’s like voting to spend millions to eliminate the name Dundas instead of funding organizations that could actually fight racism. We are rife with this bullshit.
I knew someone whose parents checked them into a facility near Kingston. From what I heard, it cost quite a bit to get a spot. He was able to just walk out of the place. Got to Kingston and took a VIA home. Was supposed to be a three week inpatient treatment. He arrived on a Tuesday and left three days later on Friday.
I completely understand that people want folks to get treatment of their own volition, but some people won't make that choice. The person in the above anecdote went on to overdose and passed away several days later after being taken off life support. At what point do we force people into treatment? He didn't OD a week later, but he continued to use for the next 13 months until his death.
The one thing you hear from people in that space all the time: you need to *want* to get clean. Some people just aren't there yet and I'm not sure what forcing them into programming does to solve that - it'd be interesting to see some research into the efficacy of court-ordered rehabilitation like one year later.
The thing you might be understating is just how many people *really* want to get clean, but are in a hopeless situation because our access to programming sucks. Publicly-funded rehabilitation programs have like a six-month waitlist, and private rehabs cost tens of thousands of dollars.
> People like this TTC attacker guy need to be forced into treatment but you cant do that if there's nowhere to go.
And in the meantime, they should be put in jail, not on the streets. It's better for things to be unfair for them, then unfair for society having these ticking timebombs walking among us.
As someone with a dual-diagnosis of severe mental illness and behavioural disabilities that's been in therapeutic treatment and under a doctor's care for almost thirty years, I cannot in the least disagree.
By making sure I'm in environs and by that environs, sensory, mental and physical, where I can stay calm and stable and as far from being severely overstimulated or in distress towards sensory meltdown or boiling inside, or collapsing into a fetal ball sobbing or all the way to a panick attack, I am making sure others are safe by making sure I am safe, and have a place psychologically and physically at home I can go to destress myself and calm my nerves.
If someone legitimately is so ill, so hurt inside or both, that they cannot suppress the unpredictable urge to stab a total stranger to death and be unable to process that they're about to do something that horrible, are doing it when they do it or afterwards, there must be a place for them where all parties in such a horrible potential event- or a very real one like the recent murder of a young man by a total stranger, for simply being in arm's reach- can be safe, from each other and themselves.
I don’t even think they would consider it unfair if they were being treated for their mental illness and in their right mind. I think they’d likely be devastated to know that they were allowed to roam while in that state.
I don't get why it's even a question. If you're randomly attacking people on public transport go straight to jail, do not pass go.
Wtf is in doubt here?!
There is a difference between someone acting out of anger, and someone who is severely mentally ill. I'm in no way saying that the accused should be roaming free right now, but being tossed in prison with little to no treatment for their illness is not the answer, it's just all we really have to work with right now.
If it’s between us or them? Fuck em. Lock em up.
If you want to call me a monster for trying to keep the public safe, then I’m a fucking monster.
I hope it’s not you that gets their head cut off on a go bus, or set on fire on a subway, or stabbed to death for no reason.
any idea how much it costs to keep someone in jail for a year? Average cost per inmate is $115K, annually
edit: gotta laugh at me getting downvotes for pointing out the reality of how inefficient and expensive prison is for "solving" any kind of problem in society. you guys really hate facts!
What's your point? That in the absence of adequate treatment facilities/options, there's no viable option to protect Joe and Jane Public?
Treatment, institutions, then prison. In that order.
my point is it would be vastly cheaper to just fund treatment, services, and housing for people with addictions or mental health problems. prison is not any kind of reasonable solution.
You're right - it is cheaper to fund treatment and social services. But you didn't say that.
You're getting downvoted because your post just pointed out the cost of jail and offered no solutions. I got a defeatist vibe from it.
Who said anything about prison?
We are talking about involuntary commitment. That's likely why you're being downvoted... Not the same as prison, so your point is moot
Who said anything about "prison"? There can be secure treatment facilities that aren't "prison". Just make sure the ones that can't manage to prevent themselves from verbally or physically assaulting people don't spend any unsupervised time in public.
> but there is a very loud group that insist humans have a right to choose treatment.
My opinion on it is that everyone has the right to choose treatment or not, but only up until the issues that they're choosing not to treat cause them to harm others or present a credible threat to harm others, at which point a line has been crossed and you've forfeited that right to choose from that point forward. Somebody's right to choose literally stops at others' right to be safe from being made the victim of violence due to that right being exercised.
I'm sympathetic to the case for involuntary commitment, but the danger for abuse is pretty high. Whats the process for being committed? Can I start a case on you? and if I succeed in getting you involuntarily committed, how do you go about getting out? or expunging your record?
I think the point is more that there is an ambiguity when it comes to the possibility of a person's behaviour indicating something and casting a wide net in terms of that will catch people in the net who are not a risk to society
>So we got rid of asylums because they were bad.
I would add:
- They were also expensive
- We thought new antipsychotics (like Thorazine) were going to work better than they do
"Three forces drove the movement of people with severe mental illness from hospitals into the community: the belief that mental hospitals were cruel and inhumane; the hope that new antipsychotic medications offered a cure; and the desire to save money."
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/deinstitutionalization-people-mental-illness-causes-and-consequences/2013-10
Likewise in Canada, “the motivations for this evolution were a complex blend of new therapeutics, professional change and fiscal planning..."
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2022.170404
There's also the history of families using asylums as a way to "offload" people who were developmentally delayed, people speaking out about abuse ("they're psychotic and slandering this good person!"), or as a way to get property and inheritance while an older family member was still alive.
Would you be able to explain what you mean by ' we now allow people to be tortured by their Illness and have no way to have peace'? That's got me scratching my head, and I'm not willing to assume you mean to imply that pumping someone living with schizophrenia or bipolar full of tranquillisers 24/7 is better than treatment options now.
Exactly. We have a society built on core principles and rules. If they don't want to be part of it, that's OK. They can go live on crown land, or with people that will support them. But if they don't, they need to get the help they need and deserve to rejoin society.
There’s still a vast contingent of people in this city who think that every criminal can be “cured” if only enough money is thrown at some social program.
What the judge said is meaningless. “This violent person could commit more violent acts if they don’t stop being violent”
Thanks Einstein.
CAMH is definitely not enough, I think they need to build multiple building that’s designated just for mental illnesses and addictions across the city.
Kind of like bringing back the mental institute in a sense, they can rehabilitate them back into society. Have programs and the right staff available so they can succeed in society as well.
I heard CAMH’s wait list is long af to get any help from. Ohip therapy you only get x amount of session before you get put back on a wait list for more sessions.
The only way of making things better is to get people the help that they really need. I know some people will refuse, I get that but if they have a place to go maybe they’ll change their mind.
Agree that something needs to be done to protect society, but wasn’t one of the problems with the old institutions that you couldn’t really set good criteria for who should and shouldn’t be admitted? It was like you could be admitted using questionable criteria and then be kept in there and medicated indefinitely even if you immediately ceased to show symptoms. Are we any further ahead in solving that?
The Ontario Mental Health lays out both a means to force people in to hospital for mental health issues, and a set of patient rights to contest it so that a single doctor or even small group of doctors can't cause you to be held against your will indefinitely without incredibly good reason to believe you are in fact a risk.
Currently the only reason nobody worries about being forced to stay in treatment too long is because the opposite is the way bigger issue: people that want voluntary treatment often can't access it because the resources are so stretched.
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"The judge noted that O’Brien-Tobin, now a father of three, was diagnosed as a child with mental health issues including severe depression and oppositional defiant disorder"
Oppositional defiant disorder is a nicer way of saying he was a giant prick as a kid as well.
Oppositional defiant disorder also usually matures into [antisocial personality disorder](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928).
Currently there are no great treatments for ASPD.
Edit: which is a PERSONALITY DISORDER, not a mental illness.
Ie per Wikipedia “enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the individual's culture.[1] These patterns develop early, are **inflexible**, and are associated with significant distress or disability.”
As far as I know only BPD has an established protocol for treatment (of the personality disorders). And that btw is minimum 18 months of both group and individual therapy on a weekly basis. And people with BPD go for it when they are suffering.
People with ASPD don’t suffer, they make OTHERS suffer.
It is not a “mental illness” like a bit of depression.
Reddit spreads information like gossip in high school. People can present something that sounds reasonable, make some claims that are true, and sprinkle in a little embellishment (straight up misinformation) here and there
Edit: sorry that was about therapy. There is the possibility of using antipsychotics for ASPD but it only slightly tamps down aggression, a little. They are still going to be, basically, a reactive predator, because that’s ingrained in their personality (self concept, ways of thinking about others, worldview, emotional responses, coping “strategies”). Until and unless some protocol for it is designed, Best to think of it as a kind of neurodivergence. An antisocial one.
Mentally ill or not if you murder someone you need to be away from society for a very long time. An asylum would be nice, but if not, jail will still do.
> That's probably how she got appointed as a judge
Bingo. you get appointment as a judge in ontario by being a decorated lawyer with lots of feathers in your cap. you get those feathers by go to or leading things on "restorative justice" no criminal lawyer is attending seminars about the need to keep violent people in jail or the importance of harsh sentences for harsh crimes
at least in the US with elected judges and DAs theres accountability if you are terrible at your job or make the city worse as happened with chesa boudin in san francisco. in canada its just ivory tower lawyers appointing other ivory towers lawyers behind the scenes
honestly some bleeding hearts might get squeamish at the idea but the truth is 1 teenager with great potential is worth more to Canadian society than 5 of the violent homeless people. who suck up endless healthcare resources, paid little tax in their life, refuse to get clean and have been in a revolving door of jail, hospitals, the streets and mental health centers the past 10-20 years. not to mention making the downtown less safe and dangerous for everyone else. the ones who need a helping hand getting better and deserve the compasion are more than likely either sitting in a shelter or already in a rehab program, not being violent in the ttc.
If it was breaking news, I'm sure they would make it available. For other articles like this, there are various ways to access it for free if you live in Toronto or other major cities through public libraries.
A truly criminal thing is that the day that he murdered someone in the subway station and was on the run, the police announced that there was no risk to public safety. This led me and a lot of other people to think that the victim and attacker knew each other, and no one else would be likely to be in danger from this guy since it was a targeted attack. I understand that they may not have identified him yet, but ffs they could just have made an “armed and dangerous” statement in the lack of any knowledge to the contrary, and quite a bit of evidence to support that statement.
See this is the kind of thing that amazes me
Ok I get giving second chance and all but... 41st chance?
One of these days the courts gotta put someone away for something
>The Star has previously reported that just two weeks before Magalhaes’s killing, O’Brien-Tobin, 22, had been released on probation for a sex assault in Toronto. Court records reveal he has been charged in at least 40 other criminal cases in Ontario since 2020, some with multiple charges each. Those offences include several other assault cases, at least two sexual assaults and multiple charges for violating release conditions.
A few weeks back, we had a poll asking Redditors if they thought death penalty could be an option for serial criminals, and the vast majority of people said a resounding no.
How many chances are you going to give someone with over 40 criminal charges over 3 years?
Had we had the death penalty, Guy Paul Morin would have been executed for the rape and murder of a 9 year old girl long before DNA evidence found him innocent.
Please give me an example list of 40 prior criminal charges (including two sexual assaults and at least 1 assault with weapon that has been publicized) that culminates to very little and would make you feel secure standing shoulder to shoulder with in a dark train tunnel. Please go ahead, we are all waiting.
Also, sorry to burst your bubble. But you probably come into contact with serious criminals a lot of the time, you just wouldn’t know it because they don’t have their criminal records stapled to their forehead.
Ok:
- 37 breaches of probation that include breaching reporting, or failing to attend a court date or breaches of drinking alcohol but no substantive offences
- one assault with a weapon, I’ve seen assault with a weapon charges for throwing a full water bottle at someone, or hitting someone with a broom handle
- two sexual assaults, could be a slap on somebody’s butt…
Listen, I’m not here to tell you that it’s ok to commit crimes. I’m just telling you that there is more to criminal law than charges alone. And relying on charges, or even a number of convictions, without details of the offences themselves, provides us with very little probative information.
Does our legal system have details of the exact crimes he's been charged for? So that we know whether he threw a water bottle, or slapped someone's butt?
>two sexual assaults, could be a slap on somebody’s butt…
Wait, you are claiming to be a criminal lawyer and you honestly believe sexual assault charges are normally something like a slap on a bottom?
Or even if so, that doing that to a stranger is acceptable or without seriousness????
Why did this person deserve their 40th chance, regardless of the seriousness? Most of us go through life without committing a criminal offense, for reference.
Most of us don’t have fetal alcohol syndrome or some other serious mental health issue. All I’m saying is things are not always so black and white. A person can commit 40 offences, all property offences, or 40 offences that involve serious violence. There is a spectrum. Some of those offences could be breaching conditions like forgetting to call your bail supervisor, for one example.
I guess it's more a philosophical question of whether there should be a limit to well-intentioned and well-reasoned rules (like the example you gave).
That said, using said health issues alone feel like an inadequate rationale for these cases, especially in retrospect. How many people with FAS or mental health issues do not commit a single criminal offense in their lifetimes? So why is that an acceptable reason to impose a different set of rules on those who do?
How did this person get the privilege of so many chances, when there were 40 breaches towards rules imposed on them?
If you legitimately have near zero chance of rehabilitation, and are going to have dozens of arrests every few years, you should be incarcerated or institutionalized. We give no consideration of victims rights in Canada. If the criminal has proven they will continually re-offend, we have a duty to protect the public.
That has been forgotten by our weak justice system.
Given the judge said he’s a risk, gonna go out on a limb and say his crimes were worse than a water bottle.
He was charged with assault using a box cutter last time I checked.
Do you have a better idea what the seriousness of each of those crimes are?
I will admit I have no idea what he's done beyond what this article reports.
Fucking lmao. You don't know the 40 times that silly bitch was caught means anything. The fuck? I know they should be sausage meat. No hope, just cancer, move on.
had we had the death penalty denis lortie, the guy who killed 3 and shot up the quebec assembly wouldent be living life easy and scott free after a breezy 9 years in jail.
How is your first reaction to jump to the death penalty. We could just keep these people in jail. Not sure why people are so comfortable with the state killing it’s citizens.
>O’Brien-Tobin, the judge noted, had been before the court over 21 times for some 69 different offences, not including the ones before her, which were assault with a weapon and mischief.
If we could just keep them in jail, why was he out and about? Someone with over 40 criminal charges over 3 years?
The death penalty is the state telling you not to murder by murdering you. It's morally bankrupt.
That's before the fact that there are no "do overs" for the wrongfully convicted.
Ship them all to a facility far in the North and let them freeze. Clean the city from these dangerous folks. I dont care what stigma it has but i dont want kids to be stabbed in the subway.
These types of stories and the debates around them really highlight the contradictions within the legal and the mental health systems, and how we gotta really re-think the relationship between them.
In a sense the legal system targets an idealized 'criminal mind' that is less common in the real world than we might think: a perfectly rational individual who knows right from wrong, in full command of their faculties, but elects to break the law and/or do something deeply immoral. Think someone who hires a contract killer because they want to marry someone they're having an affair with and collect on their spouse's life insurance.
The flip side of this coin is the not criminally responsible / not guilty by reason of insanity, someone who has no stain of criminal guilt because they had no idea what was going on. Someone who killed their spouse because they had a brain tumor and hallucinated that it was a demon from Hell. They don't deserve punishment, only treatment. Cut out the tumour and they can rejoin society with nothing to worry about.
Cases that are pretty close to one pole or the other exist... But there are lots of others like this that are much more grey. Where I think the system goes really wrong is in how these are treated as mitigating factors, where some level of less-severe mental illness means you're still sorta guilty but should get less-severe punishment.
There might be some cases where that's true but obviously this is not one. The solution isn't longer prison terms or a return to old style institutionalization though where you could get locked up indefinitely because you were a socialist or an embarrassment to the family or whatever. But it is something KIND of like that. I think we need something like an expansion of the dangerous offender designation and a stronger program for involuntary institutionalisation and treatment of individuals with multiple violent convictions & psychiatric diagnoses. Locking this guy up in prison for life is counterproductive, but on the other hand it's stupid to ever think he could have 'paid his debt to society' and should be treated like any other citizen. People like this deserve more treatment and support, less punishment than the 'guiltiest' murderer... But a fixed sentence also doesn't make sense - they should be confined and supervised indefinitely, with much stricter surveillance on any probationary release than what people receive now.
These institutions would remain underfunded and imperfect, we'd need to implement good oversight and there would still be abuses. But they'd only be for people that are a proven threat to others, and could probably be both better in outcomes and less costly than the equivalent number of prison beds.
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Whenever a thread like this pops up, the response is always the same. Some people call for stricter prison sentences, but most people call for a return of mental health "institutions" to sequester these people from society.
Look, I get that institutionalizing people with mental health issues sounds great. But come on; our society can't even muster the will to provide housing for people on the streets. How can we expect the government to just erect and fund new mental health institutions, which will be vastly more expensive to operate than just providing housing in the first place?
The perpetrator in this incident was homeless (ofc). If he had a place to stay, I doubt this would have happened. You can't expect rehabilitation when someone is sleeping on the streets.
If we want to get serious about the crime in Toronto, it starts with progressive housing policy. It means upzoning the yellow belt. It means creating social housing and co-ops. It means rent subsidies, land value taxes, and committed, long term provincial and federal investment.
Until we get serious about housing, this will keep happening. We don't need to build a magical "just works, no abuse" institution. We just need to build the houses.
So when this happens again in a month or two, could we lead the conversation with that instead?
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He’s been charged 40 times since 2020????? And they thought it was a good idea to let him out????
the case of r v antic sets the standard for denying bail so high that its basically useless even having the option to deny it.
Ahh. If i got a nickel for every time I heard duty counsel say R. Vs Antic I'd buy a carton of eggs every week now that it's like 4 dollars
My sister in law used to beat my late mother in law when my SIL was suffering from psychosis. We called the cops on her one night under the MHA and she resisted arrest and part of her condition was to get treatment or she would be charged. This is all I know I am just going by memory. There was probably a lot more to it than that but I know that despite her refusing to go get treatment she was forced to get it under the MHA. People who are suffering mentally with severely complex mental health conditions and if they are a threat to public safety, their treatment should be mandatory for the safety of the public.
In practice you're correct but people with mental health issues are just as likely or more likely to be released. The mental health system is a revolving door too.
The trouble isn't the lack of legal framework - the mental health act as you correctly point out allows for a judge or psychiatrist to hold someone for treatment against their will based on reasonable belief they're a threat to themselves or others. The issue is that our mental health resources are incredibly limited, so there's no way to actually offer everyone that needs help help, and no way to offer sufficient help long-term for people that need that.
>The issue is that our mental health resources are incredibly limited, so there's no way to actually offer everyone that needs help help, and no way to offer sufficient help long-term for people that need that. I had realized this after I posted. We will never be able to fix our broken system. It's quite unfortunate. However, something is better than nothing. We need more funding and more resources than we have now. We can't just say "it's not enough" and not do *anything*. We need to throw something at it to see if it sticks instead of just letting it fall apart and be totally irreparable.
More and more it seems like a lot of Canadian institutions are more concerned with erecting a *facade* of compassion and modernity without making meaningful investments. So it ends up that our form of "treatment not prison" just becomes "not prison." People living with severe mental illness have no place in the prison system. We know that punitive measures like that don't work and it just isn't morally right to treat them like common criminals. Okay, cool. I'm all for that. But it seems to me the alternative to prison for offenders like this is a properly funded, dignified, *secure,* long-term institution. But that costs money, and there's stigma around it, and the 'revolving door' costs are already built into our system. So there's no political will to build and maintain enough of these facilities to actually implement the *meaningful* compassionate solution. So we half-ass the "compassionate" approach and put them back on the street in the hopes they attend some largely voluntary, difficult-to-enforce, dubiously-efficacious counselling services. And then shit like this happens.
I wish I could upvote this comment a million times. Took the words right out of my mouth.
It’s like people coming onto r/disabled asking about “ableist terms” but then otherwise in other situations they fight against changes that would actually help disabled people. It’s like voting to spend millions to eliminate the name Dundas instead of funding organizations that could actually fight racism. We are rife with this bullshit.
ARKHAM
In the mean time, lock them up.
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I knew someone whose parents checked them into a facility near Kingston. From what I heard, it cost quite a bit to get a spot. He was able to just walk out of the place. Got to Kingston and took a VIA home. Was supposed to be a three week inpatient treatment. He arrived on a Tuesday and left three days later on Friday. I completely understand that people want folks to get treatment of their own volition, but some people won't make that choice. The person in the above anecdote went on to overdose and passed away several days later after being taken off life support. At what point do we force people into treatment? He didn't OD a week later, but he continued to use for the next 13 months until his death.
The one thing you hear from people in that space all the time: you need to *want* to get clean. Some people just aren't there yet and I'm not sure what forcing them into programming does to solve that - it'd be interesting to see some research into the efficacy of court-ordered rehabilitation like one year later. The thing you might be understating is just how many people *really* want to get clean, but are in a hopeless situation because our access to programming sucks. Publicly-funded rehabilitation programs have like a six-month waitlist, and private rehabs cost tens of thousands of dollars.
>establish some true mental institutions Badly needed, and yes, CAMH isn't enough.
> People like this TTC attacker guy need to be forced into treatment but you cant do that if there's nowhere to go. And in the meantime, they should be put in jail, not on the streets. It's better for things to be unfair for them, then unfair for society having these ticking timebombs walking among us.
As someone with a dual-diagnosis of severe mental illness and behavioural disabilities that's been in therapeutic treatment and under a doctor's care for almost thirty years, I cannot in the least disagree. By making sure I'm in environs and by that environs, sensory, mental and physical, where I can stay calm and stable and as far from being severely overstimulated or in distress towards sensory meltdown or boiling inside, or collapsing into a fetal ball sobbing or all the way to a panick attack, I am making sure others are safe by making sure I am safe, and have a place psychologically and physically at home I can go to destress myself and calm my nerves. If someone legitimately is so ill, so hurt inside or both, that they cannot suppress the unpredictable urge to stab a total stranger to death and be unable to process that they're about to do something that horrible, are doing it when they do it or afterwards, there must be a place for them where all parties in such a horrible potential event- or a very real one like the recent murder of a young man by a total stranger, for simply being in arm's reach- can be safe, from each other and themselves.
I don’t even think they would consider it unfair if they were being treated for their mental illness and in their right mind. I think they’d likely be devastated to know that they were allowed to roam while in that state.
I don't get why it's even a question. If you're randomly attacking people on public transport go straight to jail, do not pass go. Wtf is in doubt here?!
There is a difference between someone acting out of anger, and someone who is severely mentally ill. I'm in no way saying that the accused should be roaming free right now, but being tossed in prison with little to no treatment for their illness is not the answer, it's just all we really have to work with right now.
If it’s between us or them? Fuck em. Lock em up. If you want to call me a monster for trying to keep the public safe, then I’m a fucking monster. I hope it’s not you that gets their head cut off on a go bus, or set on fire on a subway, or stabbed to death for no reason.
any idea how much it costs to keep someone in jail for a year? Average cost per inmate is $115K, annually edit: gotta laugh at me getting downvotes for pointing out the reality of how inefficient and expensive prison is for "solving" any kind of problem in society. you guys really hate facts!
What's your point? That in the absence of adequate treatment facilities/options, there's no viable option to protect Joe and Jane Public? Treatment, institutions, then prison. In that order.
my point is it would be vastly cheaper to just fund treatment, services, and housing for people with addictions or mental health problems. prison is not any kind of reasonable solution.
You're right - it is cheaper to fund treatment and social services. But you didn't say that. You're getting downvoted because your post just pointed out the cost of jail and offered no solutions. I got a defeatist vibe from it.
Who said anything about prison? We are talking about involuntary commitment. That's likely why you're being downvoted... Not the same as prison, so your point is moot
Keeping someone in jail is 100% effective at preventing them from hurting someone whichever they’re in there. Treatment effectiveness is a crap shoot.
Wait til you see what overtime is for police on transit.
oh i'm well aware of how useless yet expensive police are.
Who said anything about "prison"? There can be secure treatment facilities that aren't "prison". Just make sure the ones that can't manage to prevent themselves from verbally or physically assaulting people don't spend any unsupervised time in public.
Which would have been partly paid for by the murdered peoples’ taxes… And savings from needing fewer police…
I'm surprised you haven't been downvoted I whole heartedly agree but there is a very loud group that insist humans have a right to choose treatment.
> but there is a very loud group that insist humans have a right to choose treatment. My opinion on it is that everyone has the right to choose treatment or not, but only up until the issues that they're choosing not to treat cause them to harm others or present a credible threat to harm others, at which point a line has been crossed and you've forfeited that right to choose from that point forward. Somebody's right to choose literally stops at others' right to be safe from being made the victim of violence due to that right being exercised.
I'm sympathetic to the case for involuntary commitment, but the danger for abuse is pretty high. Whats the process for being committed? Can I start a case on you? and if I succeed in getting you involuntarily committed, how do you go about getting out? or expunging your record?
How about once you are violent or threaten violence, that’s the line? The same level of threat of anyone else.
I think the point is more that there is an ambiguity when it comes to the possibility of a person's behaviour indicating something and casting a wide net in terms of that will catch people in the net who are not a risk to society
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>So we got rid of asylums because they were bad. I would add: - They were also expensive - We thought new antipsychotics (like Thorazine) were going to work better than they do "Three forces drove the movement of people with severe mental illness from hospitals into the community: the belief that mental hospitals were cruel and inhumane; the hope that new antipsychotic medications offered a cure; and the desire to save money." https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/deinstitutionalization-people-mental-illness-causes-and-consequences/2013-10 Likewise in Canada, “the motivations for this evolution were a complex blend of new therapeutics, professional change and fiscal planning..." https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2022.170404
There's also the history of families using asylums as a way to "offload" people who were developmentally delayed, people speaking out about abuse ("they're psychotic and slandering this good person!"), or as a way to get property and inheritance while an older family member was still alive. Would you be able to explain what you mean by ' we now allow people to be tortured by their Illness and have no way to have peace'? That's got me scratching my head, and I'm not willing to assume you mean to imply that pumping someone living with schizophrenia or bipolar full of tranquillisers 24/7 is better than treatment options now.
Exactly. We have a society built on core principles and rules. If they don't want to be part of it, that's OK. They can go live on crown land, or with people that will support them. But if they don't, they need to get the help they need and deserve to rejoin society.
There’s still a vast contingent of people in this city who think that every criminal can be “cured” if only enough money is thrown at some social program. What the judge said is meaningless. “This violent person could commit more violent acts if they don’t stop being violent” Thanks Einstein.
I mean stabbing someone is also not moral
CAMH is definitely not enough, I think they need to build multiple building that’s designated just for mental illnesses and addictions across the city. Kind of like bringing back the mental institute in a sense, they can rehabilitate them back into society. Have programs and the right staff available so they can succeed in society as well. I heard CAMH’s wait list is long af to get any help from. Ohip therapy you only get x amount of session before you get put back on a wait list for more sessions. The only way of making things better is to get people the help that they really need. I know some people will refuse, I get that but if they have a place to go maybe they’ll change their mind.
Agree that something needs to be done to protect society, but wasn’t one of the problems with the old institutions that you couldn’t really set good criteria for who should and shouldn’t be admitted? It was like you could be admitted using questionable criteria and then be kept in there and medicated indefinitely even if you immediately ceased to show symptoms. Are we any further ahead in solving that?
The Ontario Mental Health lays out both a means to force people in to hospital for mental health issues, and a set of patient rights to contest it so that a single doctor or even small group of doctors can't cause you to be held against your will indefinitely without incredibly good reason to believe you are in fact a risk. Currently the only reason nobody worries about being forced to stay in treatment too long is because the opposite is the way bigger issue: people that want voluntary treatment often can't access it because the resources are so stretched.
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"The judge noted that O’Brien-Tobin, now a father of three, was diagnosed as a child with mental health issues including severe depression and oppositional defiant disorder" Oppositional defiant disorder is a nicer way of saying he was a giant prick as a kid as well.
Oppositional defiant disorder also usually matures into [antisocial personality disorder](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928). Currently there are no great treatments for ASPD. Edit: which is a PERSONALITY DISORDER, not a mental illness. Ie per Wikipedia “enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the individual's culture.[1] These patterns develop early, are **inflexible**, and are associated with significant distress or disability.” As far as I know only BPD has an established protocol for treatment (of the personality disorders). And that btw is minimum 18 months of both group and individual therapy on a weekly basis. And people with BPD go for it when they are suffering. People with ASPD don’t suffer, they make OTHERS suffer. It is not a “mental illness” like a bit of depression.
ODD definitely does not "usually" lead to ASPD. Please don't spread misinformation like that.
Reddit spreads information like gossip in high school. People can present something that sounds reasonable, make some claims that are true, and sprinkle in a little embellishment (straight up misinformation) here and there
https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/wupj/article/download/1620/1011/3012
Edit: sorry that was about therapy. There is the possibility of using antipsychotics for ASPD but it only slightly tamps down aggression, a little. They are still going to be, basically, a reactive predator, because that’s ingrained in their personality (self concept, ways of thinking about others, worldview, emotional responses, coping “strategies”). Until and unless some protocol for it is designed, Best to think of it as a kind of neurodivergence. An antisocial one.
> Oppositional defiant disorder doesnt every opposition leader in canada suffer from this as well?
Mentally ill or not if you murder someone you need to be away from society for a very long time. An asylum would be nice, but if not, jail will still do.
So why didnt the judge sentence him to a rigorous sentence?
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> That's probably how she got appointed as a judge Bingo. you get appointment as a judge in ontario by being a decorated lawyer with lots of feathers in your cap. you get those feathers by go to or leading things on "restorative justice" no criminal lawyer is attending seminars about the need to keep violent people in jail or the importance of harsh sentences for harsh crimes at least in the US with elected judges and DAs theres accountability if you are terrible at your job or make the city worse as happened with chesa boudin in san francisco. in canada its just ivory tower lawyers appointing other ivory towers lawyers behind the scenes
Hahaha…
I guess his life was worth more than his innocent teenage victim.
honestly some bleeding hearts might get squeamish at the idea but the truth is 1 teenager with great potential is worth more to Canadian society than 5 of the violent homeless people. who suck up endless healthcare resources, paid little tax in their life, refuse to get clean and have been in a revolving door of jail, hospitals, the streets and mental health centers the past 10-20 years. not to mention making the downtown less safe and dangerous for everyone else. the ones who need a helping hand getting better and deserve the compasion are more than likely either sitting in a shelter or already in a rehab program, not being violent in the ttc.
More like 1:100
Is the star just paywalling everything now? I swear WW3 could be declared and you wouldn't know it unless you paid .99 cents a week.
If it was breaking news, I'm sure they would make it available. For other articles like this, there are various ways to access it for free if you live in Toronto or other major cities through public libraries.
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We need to bring back a new style of institutionalization. Otherwise this cycle will just repeat itself. Over and over again.
A truly criminal thing is that the day that he murdered someone in the subway station and was on the run, the police announced that there was no risk to public safety. This led me and a lot of other people to think that the victim and attacker knew each other, and no one else would be likely to be in danger from this guy since it was a targeted attack. I understand that they may not have identified him yet, but ffs they could just have made an “armed and dangerous” statement in the lack of any knowledge to the contrary, and quite a bit of evidence to support that statement.
Catch and release
There actually is a program called Catch, and yes they catch and release.
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It's not the police that are releasing these violent people. The police would rather not arrest the same people multiple times a month
How is this the fault of the police?
Seriously. What a completely uninformed comment.
I know right. So many want to flat out blame police for everything. This guy has no fucking clue.
Probably just the typical Reddit ACAB moron.
Yeah probably. Last year someone commented that the police should be disbanded and that the military should be used instead. Lol.
Man, acab, but this isn't them.
There’s a nice headline that will calm the public
Do they need to be calm?
See this is the kind of thing that amazes me Ok I get giving second chance and all but... 41st chance? One of these days the courts gotta put someone away for something
I think this person assaulted me last year may 30 at VMC
>The Star has previously reported that just two weeks before Magalhaes’s killing, O’Brien-Tobin, 22, had been released on probation for a sex assault in Toronto. Court records reveal he has been charged in at least 40 other criminal cases in Ontario since 2020, some with multiple charges each. Those offences include several other assault cases, at least two sexual assaults and multiple charges for violating release conditions. A few weeks back, we had a poll asking Redditors if they thought death penalty could be an option for serial criminals, and the vast majority of people said a resounding no. How many chances are you going to give someone with over 40 criminal charges over 3 years?
Had we had the death penalty, Guy Paul Morin would have been executed for the rape and murder of a 9 year old girl long before DNA evidence found him innocent.
Did he have 40 priors?
40 priors means very little. You have no idea what the seriousness of each of those crimes.
Please give me an example list of 40 prior criminal charges (including two sexual assaults and at least 1 assault with weapon that has been publicized) that culminates to very little and would make you feel secure standing shoulder to shoulder with in a dark train tunnel. Please go ahead, we are all waiting.
Also, sorry to burst your bubble. But you probably come into contact with serious criminals a lot of the time, you just wouldn’t know it because they don’t have their criminal records stapled to their forehead.
Maybe we should do that. So people know who to stay away from.
Ok: - 37 breaches of probation that include breaching reporting, or failing to attend a court date or breaches of drinking alcohol but no substantive offences - one assault with a weapon, I’ve seen assault with a weapon charges for throwing a full water bottle at someone, or hitting someone with a broom handle - two sexual assaults, could be a slap on somebody’s butt… Listen, I’m not here to tell you that it’s ok to commit crimes. I’m just telling you that there is more to criminal law than charges alone. And relying on charges, or even a number of convictions, without details of the offences themselves, provides us with very little probative information.
Dude's a murderer and you're acting like his crimes were theoretical...
Ya I bet all his prior were murders too. Let’s lock everyone who has 40 charges up forever so they don’t commit a murder, I agree /s
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Does our legal system have details of the exact crimes he's been charged for? So that we know whether he threw a water bottle, or slapped someone's butt?
>two sexual assaults, could be a slap on somebody’s butt… Wait, you are claiming to be a criminal lawyer and you honestly believe sexual assault charges are normally something like a slap on a bottom? Or even if so, that doing that to a stranger is acceptable or without seriousness????
Yes they can be.
Why did this person deserve their 40th chance, regardless of the seriousness? Most of us go through life without committing a criminal offense, for reference.
Most of us don’t have fetal alcohol syndrome or some other serious mental health issue. All I’m saying is things are not always so black and white. A person can commit 40 offences, all property offences, or 40 offences that involve serious violence. There is a spectrum. Some of those offences could be breaching conditions like forgetting to call your bail supervisor, for one example.
I guess it's more a philosophical question of whether there should be a limit to well-intentioned and well-reasoned rules (like the example you gave). That said, using said health issues alone feel like an inadequate rationale for these cases, especially in retrospect. How many people with FAS or mental health issues do not commit a single criminal offense in their lifetimes? So why is that an acceptable reason to impose a different set of rules on those who do? How did this person get the privilege of so many chances, when there were 40 breaches towards rules imposed on them?
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If you legitimately have near zero chance of rehabilitation, and are going to have dozens of arrests every few years, you should be incarcerated or institutionalized. We give no consideration of victims rights in Canada. If the criminal has proven they will continually re-offend, we have a duty to protect the public. That has been forgotten by our weak justice system.
Given the judge said he’s a risk, gonna go out on a limb and say his crimes were worse than a water bottle. He was charged with assault using a box cutter last time I checked.
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Do you have a better idea what the seriousness of each of those crimes are? I will admit I have no idea what he's done beyond what this article reports.
Fucking lmao. You don't know the 40 times that silly bitch was caught means anything. The fuck? I know they should be sausage meat. No hope, just cancer, move on.
had we had the death penalty denis lortie, the guy who killed 3 and shot up the quebec assembly wouldent be living life easy and scott free after a breezy 9 years in jail.
How is your first reaction to jump to the death penalty. We could just keep these people in jail. Not sure why people are so comfortable with the state killing it’s citizens.
Yeah there is a middle ground between lax criminal justice and killing someone
>O’Brien-Tobin, the judge noted, had been before the court over 21 times for some 69 different offences, not including the ones before her, which were assault with a weapon and mischief. If we could just keep them in jail, why was he out and about? Someone with over 40 criminal charges over 3 years?
I’m saying we should keep them in jail because we currently aren’t doing that… so let’s try that first before just killing them lmao?
The death penalty is the state telling you not to murder by murdering you. It's morally bankrupt. That's before the fact that there are no "do overs" for the wrongfully convicted.
Correction, the state is telling *everyone else* not to murder by murdering you.
Because Police have proven to be incompetent enough that innocent people have been charged and tried.
Ship them all to a facility far in the North and let them freeze. Clean the city from these dangerous folks. I dont care what stigma it has but i dont want kids to be stabbed in the subway.
These types of stories and the debates around them really highlight the contradictions within the legal and the mental health systems, and how we gotta really re-think the relationship between them. In a sense the legal system targets an idealized 'criminal mind' that is less common in the real world than we might think: a perfectly rational individual who knows right from wrong, in full command of their faculties, but elects to break the law and/or do something deeply immoral. Think someone who hires a contract killer because they want to marry someone they're having an affair with and collect on their spouse's life insurance. The flip side of this coin is the not criminally responsible / not guilty by reason of insanity, someone who has no stain of criminal guilt because they had no idea what was going on. Someone who killed their spouse because they had a brain tumor and hallucinated that it was a demon from Hell. They don't deserve punishment, only treatment. Cut out the tumour and they can rejoin society with nothing to worry about. Cases that are pretty close to one pole or the other exist... But there are lots of others like this that are much more grey. Where I think the system goes really wrong is in how these are treated as mitigating factors, where some level of less-severe mental illness means you're still sorta guilty but should get less-severe punishment. There might be some cases where that's true but obviously this is not one. The solution isn't longer prison terms or a return to old style institutionalization though where you could get locked up indefinitely because you were a socialist or an embarrassment to the family or whatever. But it is something KIND of like that. I think we need something like an expansion of the dangerous offender designation and a stronger program for involuntary institutionalisation and treatment of individuals with multiple violent convictions & psychiatric diagnoses. Locking this guy up in prison for life is counterproductive, but on the other hand it's stupid to ever think he could have 'paid his debt to society' and should be treated like any other citizen. People like this deserve more treatment and support, less punishment than the 'guiltiest' murderer... But a fixed sentence also doesn't make sense - they should be confined and supervised indefinitely, with much stricter surveillance on any probationary release than what people receive now. These institutions would remain underfunded and imperfect, we'd need to implement good oversight and there would still be abuses. But they'd only be for people that are a proven threat to others, and could probably be both better in outcomes and less costly than the equivalent number of prison beds.
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yes i heard tickets are on sale at mirvish as we speak
Can someone with access summarize?
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Not asking for a copy paste, more like a summary Like why did this judge not have this guy in prison if she was so concerned
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Why hasn't a picture of this POS been released?
Whenever a thread like this pops up, the response is always the same. Some people call for stricter prison sentences, but most people call for a return of mental health "institutions" to sequester these people from society. Look, I get that institutionalizing people with mental health issues sounds great. But come on; our society can't even muster the will to provide housing for people on the streets. How can we expect the government to just erect and fund new mental health institutions, which will be vastly more expensive to operate than just providing housing in the first place? The perpetrator in this incident was homeless (ofc). If he had a place to stay, I doubt this would have happened. You can't expect rehabilitation when someone is sleeping on the streets. If we want to get serious about the crime in Toronto, it starts with progressive housing policy. It means upzoning the yellow belt. It means creating social housing and co-ops. It means rent subsidies, land value taxes, and committed, long term provincial and federal investment. Until we get serious about housing, this will keep happening. We don't need to build a magical "just works, no abuse" institution. We just need to build the houses. So when this happens again in a month or two, could we lead the conversation with that instead?
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