Nottingham attacks - verdict

[DrunkenElephant]

I live in Nottingham and feel terribly sad reading the news today.

Could these deaths have been avoided if the police and mental health agencies had done more? But then how can more be done when services are on their knees?

I don’t know the answer to either question, but my hearts go out to the families of Barnaby, Grace and Ian.

I absolutely agree Pigeonqueen and Universalsnail

acute wards can be incredibly stressful places surrounded by very unwell people is not in anyway easy

Is it a failure of the government or is it the massive increase in drug taking?
The NHS website clearly states the schizophrenia can be triggered by drug abuse.

Cuts in funding and services being stretched of course has an impact

but so does drug use, it’s a vicious circle for many using drugs (most commonly cannabis) can help with anxiety, can help many people with schizophrenia feel normal but it’s makes many symptoms worse

now if there was more support would there be less use, that’s very possible

@Fairyliz OMGGGG and there it is more ignorance! Yes everyone who has this illness was a crackhead and not a normal and decent human who had their lives turned upside down, alongside everyone who loves them. The NHS are the ones failing these patients and type in you have a cough online and it will instantly say you're dying! Not everyone with this illness took drugs, my father didn't!

How have you both suddenly gone on to drug use at nearly midnight? OP was about why the sentencing wasn't murder and most queries were on whether it was safer for them to be in prison or hospital.

If someone has a MH problem alcohol (a legalised but very harmful for cost not only to people, the NHS and the general economy) may well be used to self medicate. Particularly when they are being offered zero help thanks to govt funding cuts.

Why do you think there is a massive increase in drug abuse?

Do you think addiction just happens in a little bubble where bad people take drugs and destroy their lives for zero reason?

Drug use often increases in times of poverty and hardship. Many addicts have extensive trauma histories. Many addicts turn to drugs to self medicate undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or completely untreated mental illness.

Yes government failings. The serious lack of mental health care and mental health beds is government failing. The poor response by the police was a policing failing likely related to government failings and cuts.
Increased addiction levels is a symptom of government failing.

And besides drug use is only one contributing factor in developing psychosis. Many people develop these conditions having never taken drugs. It could literally happen to you. My friend developed severe post partum psychosis with no mental health history after child birth.

And even when it has been caused by drug use. Addicts and drug users are still people who deserve compassion and adequate treatment for their illness.

I think the right verdict was reached but it does throw a light on how we view severe mental illness and it's impact on moral capacity. I think we as a society (and particularly the family) wish to see the killer branded as evil. It's not right but it is human nature.

I suppose we can't empathise to the thought processes of some one so severely ill and to some even the term 'ill' will seem like an excuse to avoid any moral.responsibility for a heinous crime. No doubt the killer was ill but illness normally in society is something that deserves compassion yet here we have a situation where there is illness but our sense of justice would possibly want to remove any compassion that illness normally warrants.

Maybe a guilty verdict would assuage the public's desire for justice and a description of the crime that was proportionate to its impact? Also have we avoided the concept of punishment in this case as the reason for secure detainment is for public protection only and not described as puntitive.

I personally don't think any prison should be about "punishment" opposed to safety and rehabilitation really,

but personally I don't think we have avoided the concept of punishment here, because the man is being punished, he has lost his freedom for probably is whole life and either is untreatable and will have to spend his whole life being forcibly treated against his will to manage him, or he'll regain reality and then be very aware of what he has done, whilst having to live in a high security psychiatric unit. That is punishment. A pretty big one tbh even then we don't label it punishment.

As for the family wanting to think he evil and having all those emotions. That is reasonable. They have experienced a great trauma, but that is why we shouldn't let families of victims be involved in the decisions around how justice etc is carried out. The justice system needs to be objective and removed from that level of emotion to work fairly.

Tragedy for all concerned. He should have been locked away securely for his own good and that of the community.

To be convicted of murder, you have to have the intent to kill unlawfully. Not all killing is unlawful, self-defence being the most obvious example. If you kill someone because your delusions are such that you firmly believe they are about to kill you and all your family, it willl be manslaughter.

Firstly, dreadful tragedy for 3 families. Loss of a loved one in such random violence . Also the others who were injured being rammed by the car he stole. This is a catastrophic tragedy that has huge familial ramifications and impact. The inevitable what ifs and processing grief and understandable rage

All 3 deceased are victims.
However the perpetrator is a victim too.

Perpetrator Calocane was symptomatic with command hallucinations ,diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and non compliant with medication and disengaged from services. He was under treated and in community when he needed treatment. It was manslaughter as it was not premeditated and he didn’t have intent or a plan. Calocane didn’t specifically chose the 3 deceased victims. Unfortunately they were wrong place,wrong time when he was floridly unwell.

psychiatry and mental health is stretched
Lack of beds.Bed occupancy exceed capacity. Growing demand. vacant unfilled posts. Staff leaving. Years of underfunding

Why do you think planning automatically means he must have had mental capacity? It's perfectly possible for someone to be so mentally ill that they are convinced that they have to kill another person for what, in the patient's head, is an absolutely justifiable reason. Their illness doesn't stop them from being able to plan how they will kill them, It basically stops them from understanding that they are acting solely as a result of a dangerous delusion.

You can all opine it’s murder,it patently is not. It wasn’t premeditated. A floridly unwell man with command hallucinations is in a mental health crisis. He wasn’t planning and managing scenarios. His psychosis was such that his moos,mental state and judgement were all significantly impaired. I know this is scary and somewhat unpalatable but Calocane was in an altered mental state,in Christ’s with diminished responsibility. The psychiatrists who saw him agreed he was in crisis with diminished responsibility

Typo, that was autocorrected. Calocane was in an altered mental state,in crisis with diminished responsibility. The psychiatrists who saw him agreed he was in crisis with diminished responsibility

I've had dealings with an ex-soldier who has become severely mentally ill as a result of his experiences, which included his best friend being blown up and dying beside him. When at his worst, he believes that he is back in service and that totally random people are plotting to attack him and his colleagues, including his deceased best friend, and that he must go out and kill them before they do. Because of his training, he knows exactly how to do that, and also where to get weapons and how to use them. He is perfectly capable of planning the operation meticulously and carrying it out. Fortunately so far that has been prevented, mainly by medication.

If that man went out tomorrow and killed people in the firm belief that that was the only way to protect himself, his friend and his family, would you seriously consider that he deserved to be beaten to a pulp?

Exact cause of schizophrenia unknown. No single sole cause. It’s not attributable to substance misuse alone. Drug use in itself won’t cause schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is linked to genetics, brain chemistry, biopsychosocial factors and trauma.

Maybe it's time the government realised care in the community dosent work. Probably change their minds if it was one of theirs.

Hate the expresión wrong place wrong time. They had every right to be there.
It's him that was wrong? Why do they have to harm other people why not themselves?

Richard Dadd, the Victorian artist, spent the latter part of his life in Broadmoor, where he painted his masterpiece, "The fairy feller's master-blow,"

He was in there because he had killed his own father. Except he thought he was killing a demon who looked exactly like his father.

I also know of someone who was let down by Secondary Services about 15 years ago. Despite him fighting for days against his compulsion to stab somebody, his compulsion took over, and he is now in a forensic ward. Thankfully no-one was killed.

My brother has this illness, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. He's only just come out of an 18 month psychosis which we thought would never end (or end in tragedy). It's like he was just back to normal again one day.

When he's himself he's the most laid-back chilled out guy but he was constantly so angry when he was ill. He never hurt anyone but shouted and threatened a lot and damaged property. We've had a restraining order against him in the past and we've had to call police more than once. We don't hold any of that against him now, he wasn't well and wasn't himself. We always just go back to our usual family dynamic after he's better, even though it seems at the time we're never gonna speak to him again because of the way he acts and the things he says.

We can always tell when his MH is worsening, unfortunately it takes a lot to convince doctors because they don't always see the behaviour we do and rarely take us seriously. His case worker is useless (I think he's signed him off now, I'm not sure what he did the whole time, seemed to be very blasé about his illness and of very little support) and we pray he won't have another episode for a long time-they seem to happen every few years. And we thank our lucky stars nothing too disastrous happened although it was still pretty bad what he got himself into.

My thoughts go out to the poor victims and their families in this terrible case and I dearly hope we are not reading about a similar tragedy again anytime soon.

I know this may be semantics but a murder charge may have been appropriate simply to appease the family and society. The sentence in reality would be the same but it would make clear to all how society regarded the gravity of the offence. Even though the killer had diminished responsibility the act itself could be described as particularly grevious and warrants a description which would in time with public opinion rather than a right legal defintiion. I suppose it's a philosophical and psychological question how much awareness the killer had of his own actions or the level of intent but what cannot be disputed is the fact these deaths in the wider public sphere are regarded as murders. The sentence is being reviewe d and although the sentence won't change there may good reason to redefine the crime.

@mids2019 its not about appeasing society though. We don’t charge a mentally unwell man with a crime to appease society.

If it had been a murder charge there is every chance he would have been found not guilty. It’s much more difficult to prove, and with the knowledge of his mental health background and the psychiatric reports there is every chance that the jury would have found him not guilty based on the diminished responsibility. There would have been absolute outcry. Or he could have been sentenced to life and out in 20 years.

By using manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility he is in hospital for life. The public is safe from this man at least, which is the aim. It may not feel like justice for the family, and I respect that entirely. Other than that it really is irrelevant what anyone else thinks, they can call it what they like.

@Universalsnail thank you for your responses on this thread, you speak so much sense and I hope people have learned from your posts.

@girlfriend44 because paranoid schizophrenia doesn’t work like that!!

Taking the girl I knew as an example, she rest believed she had to kill her unborn child in order to save the world. She thought she had been given this task and it was down to her solely to save the rest of the world by killing her baby. Why would she harm herself?! She didn’t know what she was planning was wrong, she wasn’t thinking with a clear head.

If someone with paranoid schizophrenia thinks people are out to kill them, they aren’t just going to kill themselves. They still want to live. They have a perceived threat that is very real to them, but they’re not suicidal; they want to survive whatever the threat is.

I haven’t been following the case but I did hear the families’ statements and my heart went out to them. Such an awful crime.

I see the AG will review but it may not change things

I’m not sure what you do if someone does not take medication, does it mean becoming a long term patient so society is safer?

Or are there other ways to help them so the risk is lower

Really?you read my post and all you take from it is oh why didn’t he just kill himself?
This is a tragedy on a catastrophic scale impacting the families & friends of the deceased and the public who we’re mown down by the car he stole
my point the utter randomness of the event, what if they had been present earlier/later, taken different routes etc. They were literally were physically in wrong place at wrong time they couldn’t have foreseen the danger or risk. Unfortunately they encountered a floridly psychotic unwell man having a mh crisis responding to command hallucinations

Try ease up on petty linguistics and think about the actual case.