‘Incurable psychopath' hounded back to jail by media attention (Toronto)

[Wonk]

A man labelled an “incurable psychopath” has been sent back to prison Wednesday after his brief taste of freedom was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of attention.

(snip)

He refused comment to reporters gathered for his release and tried to book into a Toronto-area motel. Denied access because he lacked proper identification, he checked into another establishment, only to be thrown out when fellow guests learned who he was.

With nowhere to go, and journalists sticking persistently to his tail, Mr. Ferrier went to a police station and asked for a place to stay. They also refused to take him in and, late Tuesday evening, his frustration apparently boiled over. Peel Regional Police spokeswoman Constable Kathy Gagnon told globeandmail.com that it was while Mr. Ferrier was in the station that he allegedly threatened the life of a journalist. She would not name the victim or their employer.

It was only then that he received his wish and got a place to stay the night. Convicted Wednesday on charges of uttering death threats and breaching the conditions of his release, Mr. Ferrier is now back in the arms of the prison system, where he had spent 15 of the past 17 years.

(snip)

Mr. Ferrier has racked up more than 60 convictions, many for violent or sexual offences.

more...
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040707.w5ferr070711/BNStory/National/

[Columbia]

1. So much for paying one's debt to society, eh?

[pretzel4gore]

2. terrible cowards and bullies....

mind you, the guy's got self control problems and needs to join foreign legion or something, but....them righteous bugs who harass the all alone ex con....relentlessly until he lost his temper.....society is bushit, and desrves whatever hell coming its way. btw his 'mother' was the main instigator of the alert, condemning her doomed son, who went to jail first time in his mid teens, to more of the same.
if he was a real psycho, he'd have same mob eating outta his hand and screaming at anyone who suggested he not a nice guy!
they don't put the psychos in protective custody for his/her sake only, but to stop the real vicious ones from building lil empires

[Jack_DeLeon]

3. from what I read in the story....

it sounds like he had quite a loving family. :eyes:

[NorthernSpy]

4. not a railroading, I don't think

It's good to want to give someone the chance to turn over a new leaf, but I really wouldn't go all snuffly over the plight of this Martin Ferrier just yet. Having read a little more about him, he seems not to be a harassed ex-con trying to go straight, but rather a persistently dangerous person in need of long-term control. Some highlights of his career:


* Sixty-four criminal convictions, begining with an offense committed at age eleven

* Twenty-three convictions for assorted crimes of violence

* Six convictions for sexual assault. Refused all sex-offender treatment

* Attempted to burn to death a woman and her two children

* Avoided being formally declared a dangerous offender on a technicality


Seems to me that the problem here isn't that a vindictive society is inventing excuses to railroad Ferrier back into prison; it's that he didn't receive enough jail time in the first place.

The Martin Ferriers of the world are the reason why so many of us want to carry guns for protection.


Certainly, I am all for helping former prisoners to re-enter society. But the average prisoner is not a psychopath, and Ferrier is. When Ferrier's own mother calls for him to be locked up for good, is it necessarily because she's unloving and a bad parent? Perhaps it's because she knows her son well enough to know that he's truly dangerous and unlikely to reform.


http://www.northpeel.com/br/news/story/2019392p-2338470c.html


Mary

[iverglas]

5. yup

I haven't quite caught what the glitch was that prevented him from being declared a "dangerous offender" and detained indefinitely. It seems to be that someone neglected to do it at the time of his conviction, and the provision for it to be done at the time of parole only applies to someone serving 10 years or more, which he wasn't.

Despite the held over notions from a primitive Puritan past in the US, sentencing of criminals really is not about "paying one's debt to society". It is, first and foremost, about protecting society; it is also about rehabilitating offenders, and deterring them and others from committing criminal offences, and about society's formal expression of its disapproval of and revulsion at certain acts.

The sentences that had been imposed on this man protected society while they were in effect, but society needed protection from him still. He had not been rehabilitated -- and as a psycopath, is not capable of rehabilitation by any means now at our disposal. He simply is not deterred from committing further offences by the experience and threat of imprisonment. Society's disapproval means nothing to him.

He was going to offend again. We can be as certain of that as we can of any prediction of anyone's behaviour.

He is the reason that we have "dangerous offender" legislation -- to account for the fact that society simply needs to be protected from some people on an indefinite basis, and that nothing other than continued incarceration will achieve that goal. (Although I might argue that someone incarcerated as a dangerous offender, once the specific sentence has been served, should be housed somewhere other than a prison, since prisons are punitive and not merely preventive deprivations of rights.)

The press did its job rather zealously here, no question. The police would probably have had to do that job, otherwise, if they were to fulfil their duty to protect the public -- and yes, they do have that duty here. Lawsuits would undoubtedly have resulted in he had succeeded in hurting someone else. Cheaper to have the press doing the surveillance.

[TX-RAT]

6. "dangerous offender" legislation

In TX we call it Incorrigible.
And thats exactly what this gentleman is.

[iverglas]

7. a bit more

http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec752.html
http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec753.html

The "dangerous offender" finding can only be sought in a prosecution for an offence against the person punishable by ten years or more. The offence of threatening that he pleaded guilty to yesterday is only punishable by a maximum of 5 years:
http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec264.1.html

That was unfortunately the same offence for which he had just served the 2-year sentence, so the designation could not have been sought when he was convicted that time, either.

The worrywarts and proponents of the theory that this man had "paid his debt to society" should consider some more of what the Globe reported:

Mr. Ferrier's mother -- who has a restraining order against her son -- told The Globe and Mail that he has threatened her by letter as recently as February. ...

... he had refused all treatment programs during his latest stint in prison.

Not the hallmarks of someone paying a debt to society.


(edited to fix Criminal Code section numbers in url)

[LibLabUK]

8. Psychiatric care

"Although I might argue that someone incarcerated as a dangerous offender, once the specific sentence has been served, should be housed somewhere other than a prison, since prisons are punitive and not merely preventive deprivations of rights.)"

Are there no Canadian equivalents of ?

[iverglas]

9. the problem with psychopaths

They don't qualify for the "not guilty by reason of insanity / mental disease / mental defect" defence. They appreciate the nature and quality of their actions perfectly, and they understand the "wrongness" of them, they just don't give a shit.

So he is convicted of his offences each time. He didn't threaten the his brother-in-law because he thought he was Satan come to snatch his sister away to hell. He knew what he was doing, and he knew it was illegal.

When found not guilty by reason of <whatever we're calling "insanity" these days>, someone will indeed be locked away in a psychiatric care facility for <whatever we're calling "the criminally insane" these days>. But when simply found guilty, convicted and sentenced, they go to prison/penitentiary.

Someone who's found not guilty by reason of insanity is usually locked up indefinitely, "at the pleasure of" the Lt.-Gov. of the province in our case, Her Majesty in yours I imagine, unless you've updated the language. This now involves committees that determine when it's safe to release someone, but that's still a long and unreliable process.

And then when they're no longer under sentence, they can't be locked up unless they can be the equivalent of "sectioned" -- used to be section 10 here, I think. There was a deal in my day where the Crown would withdraw charges if the judge immediately ordered the accused civilly committed under s. 10 of the Mental Health Act, when the charges were very minor and didn't justify locking someone up indefinitely as criminally insane, since it's easier to get out of civil commitment than of being locked up at the pleasure of.

Would there be a chance of getting this guy civilly committed, as being a danger to others? Note that he has refused all treatment while in prison, so he isn't about to agree to voluntarily enter a facility. The problem is that being a psychopath doesn't actually make one mentally ill. It's a personality disorder, rather than a "disease of the mind". He doesn't have delusions, he isn't suicidally or homicidally depressed. He's just really really not nice. And that's why he's a danger to others, not because he's mentally ill.

This is what the "dangerous offender" status application was meant to address. People who aren't crazy, they're just hardcore not nice, and there are good grounds to expect they will continue to act in not nice ways. Maybe the requirements for applying for that status should be lowered. Canadian sentences are fairly logical, with maximum sentences that fall into categories -- basically, up to 6 months, up to 2 years, up to 5 years, up to 10 years, up to 14 years, up to life -- and the 10-year potential-maximum-sentence line that was drawn should logically coincide with the kinds of offences that mean that someone who commits them is truly "dangerous". Uttering threats, max 5 years, really isn't one of them.

Some problems don't have good solutions, and psychopaths are pretty definitely one of them.


Edit:

I kinda missed your actual point. Could he be put in a facility for the criminally insane after serving his actual sentence, if he *were* declared a dangerous offender by a court?

Same basic answer: he isn't insane, so he couldn't actually be put in a psychiatric facility. I was thinking more along the lines of a secure (very secure, if necessary) facility that just wouldn't include the punitive aspects of prison, the unnecessary deprivations of liberty and association and privacy and so on, within the confines of the facility. Sort of like a facility for the criminally insane, probably, just not the same facility. ;)