Allan Schoenborn, the B.C. father found not criminally responsible for killing his three children, has been the poster boy for federal reforms
By Dene Moore
The Canadian Press
February 14, 2013
It was a horrific crime, so grotesque that Allan Schoenborn, the B.C. father found not criminally responsible for killing his three children, became the poster boy for reforming the federal law to keep mentally ill offenders in detention for longer periods of time.
But Schoenborn is still entitled to an annual hearing before the B.C. Review Board, a hearing scheduled to take place Friday at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital he now calls home.
And some wonder if the amendments announced last week won’t actually have the opposite of the desired effect, by discouraging plea bargains that see mentally ill offenders opt for treatment.
“You’re going to have a lot more mentally disordered people who have gone to jail for a period of time, have been untreated, and are back on the street untreated. So in that sense it doesn’t really make people much safer,” said Bernd Walter, chairman of the B.C. Review Board.
Policy decisions are the purview of the federal government but the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act is “quite unclear in terms of how it will work,” said Walter, who is also the chairman of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
Walter said many of the approximately 260 cases under the jurisdiction of the board were resolved by agreement between the defence and the Crown that the offender is so mentally ill that they did not understand their actions to be criminal.
The entire article is here.
