A reply to Melanie Phillips (Boris Johnson, your turn will come!)

Dear Madam,
In response to “Forget the killer’s rights” article, I must first point out several flaws in your reasoning. You mention a series of “horrifying killings” by individuals who were diagnosed as suffering from “schizophrenia” or other “mental illnesses”. However, you then contradict yourself by claiming psychiatrists are blinded by an “ideological obsession” with treating lapses in people’s mental well-being. By definition, “psychiatric illnesses” are diagnosed by psychiatrists; if the purpose, or commitment, of psychiatrists is in question, then so are their diagnoses.

In 2005, there were 765 homicides in the United Kingdom: about fifty of these were carried out by an individual who had been diagnosed with a mental health problem. I live in Stoke-on-Trent. Every year fifty people commit suicide in my city, for reasons of their own. Extrapolating this figure to the whole of the country, as Stoke-on-Trent does not have a particularly high suicide rate, it is very likely that there are several thousand suicides every year in the UK. As one in four people is likely to experience a period of low mental ill health at some point in their lives, it is easy to see that an individual with these kinds of problems is a hundred times more likely to harm themselves than someone else. Considering the statistics, a “mentally healthy” individual is much more likely to kill someone than someone from the minority who do experience some kind of difficulty in this area.

The very point about freedoms, human rights and civil liberties is that people are “free” to kill if they are to enjoy freedom of action. It is up to the individual’s community or society in general to decide what to do when this freedom is abused. The minority of individuals who commit violent acts while experiencing lapses in judgement should be treated and not punished. These crimes are not acted out of greed or malice, unlike the majority of violent attacks, in which alcohol is often involved or the victim is known to the perpetrator.

For example, two women a week, on average, are murdered by their husbands or partners. In recent years, infanticide by a parent or guardian has been the most common cause of infant mortality for babies aged less than one year of age. It is unfair at best to discriminate against a minority of people who are often most unable to defend themselves by blaming them for violence towards others when they are more likely to be victims themselves.