Health reprieve for killers taints justice
THE ingrained leniency of our legal system represents a betrayal of the public. Dressed up as enlightened compassion, its attachment to excusemaking means the rights of criminals often seem to count for more than the rights of their victims.
Those twisted priorities can be seen in the handling of the knife rampage carried out last June in Nottingham by Valdo Calocane.
In a sustained display of savage violence, he fatally attacked two students on their way home from a night out, killed a school caretaker going to work, stole his van and tried to mow down a trio of pedestrians. This catalogue of lethal butchery should have ensured that Calocane, once convicted, would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
But our enfeebled authorities had other ideas. First, lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to put him on trial for murder, but accepted a plea of manslaughter on the grounds of “diminished responsibility” because of his mental health. Then the judge Mike Turner handed Calocane an indefinite hospital order, which created the real possibility he could be freed if his doctors believe he has recovered from his psychosis, and the Justice Secretary agrees.
There is a glaring contrast between this case and that of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who was tried for murder in 1981 despite four psychiatric reports that diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic. Like Calocane, Sutcliffe declared that he heard voices in his head, inciting him to kill. But, crucially, the Mental Health Act did not come into force for two more years so the judge, Sir Leslie Boreham could dismiss claims of diminished responsibility on the grounds of mental illness.
Thus, the jury found Sutcliffe guilty of murder. The question of his release never arose before he died in 2020. Compare that with the latest events in the Calocane saga this week when the Court of Appeal upheld the original verdict. Calocane’s lawyer claimed “he is likely to spend the remainder of his days in hospital”.
But in fact, 90 per cent of offenders who receive hospital orders are out in 10 years, and 98 per cent of them in 20.As Calocane is only 32, he will probably be released well before his 50th birthday.
That would be a sickening insult for the relatives of those who died at his hands. But he should never have been free to inflict his bloodsoaked mayhem.
Since 2020, he had been involved in a string of serious incidents, including violent assaults on flatmates, work colleagues and a police officer. Yet concern about his psychological health acted as a shield against prosecution, for the state preferred pharmacological intervention to penal incarceration.
He therefore remained at large, a deadly menace to the public.
CALOCANE’S case illustrates the disastrous consequences of the modern obsession with mental illness. In a culture that seeks to medicalise any deviation from an arbitrary benchmark of normality, every kind of violent criminal behaviour can theoretically be seen as a symptom. According to one British Psychological Society paper, more than 90 per cent of prisoners have at least one type of mental health issue, with more than 70 per cent having a diagnosis of two or more.
Criminals are therefore being absolved of responsibility, even painted as victims of society.
Amy Elkington, a University of Chichester law lecturer, demonstrated this on Tuesday after saying- Calocane was “let down by failings” in the mental health system. She added: “We don’t punish people for their disability or ill health.”
When murderous, psychopathic rage is described as a disability, moral integrity really has vanished. That is why leaving grieving families are left without justice.