How will it help anyone if this man goes to prison?

[DecisionTime123]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd0r5zez9o
Man kept his dead mother in the freezer, held her hand and chatted to her.

I definitely agree he needs to pay the benefits etc back if possible, but they are letting rapists out of prison as they don't have the room, yet this clearly mentally ill man has to be locked up? YABU = he deserves punishment in custody or YANBU = it won't help anybody, he should get a suspended sentence

It’s all a bit Norman Bates for my liking.

Of course he needs to go to prison.

We desperately need more prison places. Crime is getting out of control and criminals are getting short sentences (or NO sentence at all!) because of stupid human rights meaning they can't go to jail because it is "over-crowded". If it was up to me I'd just cram them all in there, 10 or more to a cell if necessary.

Maybe it's getting out of control because prison doesn't really work to solve anything? It's a temporary bandage to a long term problem.

From the article- 'He ran upstairs and later could be heard telling a girlfriend on the phone that the "police are going to arrest me, you've got the will".'

Was he really a mentally ill man unable to let go, or was that a picture created to try and get away with using his dead mother to get money for him and his girlfriend?

Can you think of any way he could have made the money stop coming without alerting the authorities that his mother was dead? There's no evidence he wanted the money, or did this in order to obtain money. It's all sad. And obviously the money will be returned, that goes without saying.

How do you know he’s mentally ill? Horrible people who do awful things don’t always have a mental illness.

It kind of reminds me of the Hannah Fry AI programme where she met a man who had made an AI bot based on his late mother and would talk to it as though it was her. She found it difficult to process, because on the one hand she understood that wish to maintain a connection with the person who has passed and on the other hand she wondered whether it was healthy to postpone the moment of letting go like this. The man maintained it was not hurting anybody and she did agree with that.

I know that's not the same at all, because in that case presumably the man's mother was properly declared dead and either cremated or buried. But it kind of makes me think that probably in that situation, his mother had died in hospital where medical procedures for death would be standardised. And/or there would be siblings, or other family members who were aware of the mother's existence and who would have also wanted to grieve, hold a funeral etc and so would prompt that the usual rituals should take place. Or the man would have people in his life who were aware of his closeness to his mother and might check in with him and offer sympathy when she died.

Those relationships must not have been there in this situation, and I think that isolation is what is sad. Like if MIL died at home, and DH was on the internet ordering a freezer, I'd be like WTF - no - I'm sorry but you cannot keep her in a freezer, this is an insane plan, we need to call a doctor/funeral home/etc because that's the right thing to do. ANYONE would say that.

This man had a gf - did she know about it? Maybe he never invited her to his house but it's so strange, anyway.

I understand the anger about unlawfully claiming benefits but I do think it is missing the point (unless it did turn out to be a plot with the gf). Why is preventing burial even a crime? It's got to be related to the reasons that we even have rituals to deal with bodies in the first place - avoiding health hazards from decomposition, a sense of dignity for the deceased, a general sense that it is wrong/creepy (imagine opening the freezer expecting to find ice cream?) as well as allowing other people the right to grieve/have a grave to visit etc.

The DWP don’t double check with all the local funeral directors that you’ve actually disposed of the body you know!

But surely if they was money to be left in the Will, and it was money he was after then he would have said she had died.

It doesn’t sound like there was any long term plan here! What was he planning to do long term ? In a power cut? It seems like an emotional thing rather than something strategic.

I wonder did his mother own the house and if so wouldn’t it be worth more than the pension?

The more I think about it, the more I think that he didn’t have good legal representation.

Really?

Exactly!! House arrest!

Well he'd love that wouldn't he? He's a recluse and a loner.
It would be more of a punishment for him to be forced out in public to interact and socialise fir 12 out of every 24 hours

If his mental health is good enough to claim £78K in benefits which he is not entitled to does not need help as much as he needs reminding that fraud is theft. If we let people like this get away with a little counselling it gives everyone who would like to defraud the benefit system confidence there will be no consequences , so it will run rampant which will lead to benefits being withdrawn- we cannot afford the level of benefits and benefit fraud which are now happening.

They auto alert the Probation officer when an inclusion or exclusion zone is breached.
Not saying I agree with house arrest but the tech capability is already used for this on bail and licence

but locking him up will cost the state even more money that could be used for the nhs

On paper yes it is benefit fraud.

But come on - examine the bigger picture. He’s 60 with severe trauma/MH/social isolation issues and he gave up his job in 2022 to look after his mum full time and he’s likely going to prison. He’ll be older when he gets out and he’ll have a criminal record. So the state will need to look after him for the rest of his life. He was receiving her pension, pension credit, winter fuel, COL, payments and whatever else. So when he gets out of prison, he will receive all these benefits in his own right. Plus the state will pay ££££££ for his stay in prison. The £78k over 3 years is suddenly looking like peanuts against what will need to be paid out to look after him forever.

like a pp says. He isn’t looking for victims to freeze. He was severely traumatised and disturbed. The body wasn’t in the garage in a freezer and frozen so he could collect money. The body was in the lounge with him and he held her hand and wrote to her. She must have died at home and he didnt feel able to call anyone.

I feel sorry for him

personally he needs help

I suppose he had no choice. How would he stop the benefits without telling them she'd died? If he wanted to keep her with him, he couldn't tell them. I think it's really sad.

The link @DecisionTime123 posted makes me wonder whether it was mental health after her death or yet another controlling man in it for the money.

For 6 months before she died, at least half of which he had given up work to look after her, but never took her to the GP despite her going frequently prior to that. Why did she totally change her habits and become isolated and how did she die. I guess we will never know...

But that excuse could be used for anyone who defrauds the benefits system.

The fact is he kept claiming. Irrespective of how close, he was to his mother, he kept asking for the money.

If I compare it to myself. In 1993 my dad died, I'd been married a month. I was 24 the interest rate on our subsided mortgage was 8% for the first part 15% for the rest we earned £17k between us and suddenly we had two houses to pay for in the middle of a property crash....I was financially stuffed. I could easily have kept claiming dad's benefits...but i didn't knowing it was illegal.

It’s sad that she had nobody except the local GP wondering where she was. It sounds like she was quite isolated.

I don’t feel too sorry for him. That’s a lot of money & how does someone even get that much in benefits? It’s similar to my teaching pension and state pension combined once I get to retire. He totally knew what he was doing with all the lies. It meant he could continue to not work.

They might be alerted, but someone, a physical person, would still have to attend. There isn't anyone physically stopping them from doing things, they are just monitored. So if he went out and about daily, unless they follow him and restrain him, fit him with a shock collar or nail his door closed, nobody can physically stop him.

he bought the freezer within two days of her dying. He had a motive in not registering her death.

He clearly is on some level mentally ill, but I think people fail to understand that mental illness in itself isn't a defence against a crime. A huge proportion of criminals are mentally ill, but it doesn't necessarily mean they aren't responsible for their actions. For mental illness to be a defence, it has to be proven that the perpetrator was genuinely incapable of distinguishing delusion from reality and had no capacity to understand what they were doing.

For example, someone with severe psychosis who is hallucinating, hearing voices, has no perception of reality and genuinely thinks the person walking towards them in the street is the Devil, complete with cloven hooves and a pitchfork, and needs to be killed to avoid the destruction of the entire world, would likely be determined to be 'not guilty by reason of insanity'.

But someone who had severe OCD, and as a result scrubbed their child red raw with bleach until their skin bled to get rid of germs, would likely be found guilty and probably jailed for whatever the appropriate offence was - child cruelty, a bodily harm offence, or whatever.

This man was obviously unwell but he didn't put his mother in a freezer because he was having a psychotic episode. He was unwell, but he knew what he was doing and he knew that it was illegal. Keeping a human corpse in a freezer and claiming tens of thousands in benefits is a massively serious crime and he knew that.

strictly speaking some people do get lesser sentances or none custodial ones due in part to mental health