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I mean, I acknowledge that the optics of this are bad. But Britain is still a liberal society with rule of law, where even obvious ne'er do wells have rights. You can't just grab people off the streets because they're sketchy.
There was a case in America where a school shooter's parents were charged and imprisoned for not stopping him. I suppose that rule should apply here, but at the end of the day, I don't want to live in the society where people are scooped up for being concerning. I suspect you don't either. Britain will instead make noises about banning knives because it's Britain.
After the expulsion for violence isn't some compulsory mental health follow-up and involuntary admission appropriate?
I know this can be challenging in the US since the 60's and 70's for civil liberties reasons but if this is the alternative I'm unconvinced.
It seems like every mass shooter in the US was giving warning signs ahead of time- how many of them get caught and prevented? This is clearly harder than you're making it seem.
In this particular incident he goes from homicidal ideation at 13 to a narrowly averted attack at his prior school and the successful attack at the dance school at 17.
In between there was an expulsion from school for violence and admitting carrying a knife to school to 'Use it', an out of school attack on a student with a hockey stick on which he'd written his intended victims names. This attack sees him barred from from his new school's campus and he receives instruction online, with home visits from tutors sometimes with the police. There's a gap between the expulsion and new school due to an alleged incident at his home.
The reporting on his choice of reading materials is just noise. His behavior should be the focus, if he's murderous for Al Queda or Islamic reasons or murderous nutjob reasons.
What is the argument for not having residential / custodial schools for 'juvenile delinquents' or sending kids like this to them?
How long have the state schools (closed residential / custodial schools) been closed? This fact pattern or less in many circumstances would have seen you sent to one.
I'm not immediately aware of mass shooters in the US with as much prior contact with law enforcement and various programs and referrals, though they plausibly exist.
In this instance and I suspect many others a more custodial environment would have produced a better outcome.
My mother was sent to a state residential / custodial school for girls in the 60's for much less.
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The thing it's easy to miss when you read about eye-popping crimes in the news every few days is they're still very rare. Disaffected youth who've been expelled, people who've posted online that they kind of want to shoot up school/congress/whatever else, outnumber people who'll actually do that by like a thousand to one (I don't have a legible source for this, but I think it's intuitive). This isn't like shoplifting or selling drugs, where most of the crimes are committed by people who commit many crimes, and 'round them all up' is an effective approach - to actually prevent random incidents like this, you'd have to involuntarily commit a lot of people. And I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, especially since dying from terrorism-ish homicide or school shooting is much rarer than "normal" homicide, or getting hit by a car, or the many other reasons people die.
His behavior from 13 - 17 is the concern, not internet posting or reading material.
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They occasionally do this, but psychiatrists don't like it because they see it as schools pawning off their disciplinary problems on doctors rather than solving them themselves. I can't find it, but the local news did a story a few years back after one of the school shootings about how some local districts had adopted zero tolerance policies and were sending any kids who exhibited violent tendencies to Western Psych at the drop of a hat. The doctors they interviewed basically said that the ED is there for people who have acute mental health crises and not kids who got into fights. So what was happening was the kids were waiting for hours at the bottom of the triage list and when the doctor concluded they didn't meet the criteria for admission they were sent home. But the school got to say they referred him to psych immediately and didn't take any chances.
The upshot of what the one doctor was saying was that long-term behavior problems are the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with over the course of months or even years, and that psychiatric hospitals aren't equipped for that. He said that if the schools were concerned they needed to hire their own mental health staff that could work with students and parents to resolve the problems. I can tell you right now that this isn't going to happen because the incentives are aligned against it. If a school hires its own counselors and starts its own program for troubled youth then it's going to cost a lot of money and if one of those kids ends up doing something terrible the program is going to be put under a microscope and probably won't come out looking good. If they say "we sent him to Western Psych after we saw the red flags" then their insurance will pay for it and Western Psych can explain to the media why the treatment didn't work.
Realistically, though, the doctors were right: Not all problems are mental health problems. If a guy keeps getting into fistfights at bars that don't cause any serious injury we don't send him to the nuthouse. It's a criminal matter. And realistically we don't even do that much in a situation like that; while misdemeanor battery has around a five year max in most jurisdictions, first offense you can likely plead down to disorderly conduct. After that you'll get a combination of fines, probation, and suspended jail sentences until you either get into a fight while on probation or the judge looks at the rap sheet and simply loses patience. The most you might get in the way of treatment is court-ordered anger management classes (I know three people who have completed these and they all say it works). I've never heard of anyone going to Western over a barfight unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances.
What I'm looking for is more a custodial / residential school or reform school.
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I think you can go too far in that direction though. This guy was getting material to make chemical weapons, literature from a terrorist organization, was caught numerous times carrying weapons, and had been expelled from school for violence. How many bright red flags need to be waved before the government is allowed to do something about this guy? Or does “rule of law” mean we have to let people openly plan terrorist acts and let them kill people and terrorize the public, because to do otherwise violates procedures? I think even if you had to make up an excuse for a 48 hold for psychiatric evaluation, it probably would have allowed the police to investigate and find evidence.
I’m of the school of thought that without Justice and safety, nothing else matters. We’re so deep into anarchy-tyranny that the public is now being trained on how to behave when Theres a mass casualty event in a public place. We’re chewing through what’s left of the high trust society we used to have as more and more things get locked up because of theft and people are more worried about security when going out in public. The government only seems to be able to act when the usually law-abiding citizens complain or try to do something about it. If such things continue down this path, there won’t be a society to protect. King Charles’ grandkids might well rule over a country full of uncontrolled knife gangs. America might be full of cartels and mafiosi. Unless crime is actually to be curbed, by law or by the police simply taking control, you might end up there.
Sure, 'planning a terrorist attack' should be a crime, and probably is(especially in Britain). Did this guy have probable cause on it, though? Like he'd been caught for carrying weapons, but I'm imagining that minor knife violations are mostly associated with people who live in the ghetto, not Al Qaeda. Was he caught with ricin and terrorist materials or did that stuff get found after he was searched, later?
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I always thought sicking the police on people for "hate speech" goes against liberal principles, so I think it's only the "rule of law" bit that they can possibly lay claim to. And I'm not sure I believe that claim either.
Britain has some very dystopian speech laws from what I understand, but it's still a very liberal society compared to Russia or, going more extreme, North Korea. Maybe this is damning with faint praise, but it's true. There are plenty of places in the world where free speech is more dangerous than it is in Britain. I wish that Britain adopted more US-like attitudes to free speech, but I don't think it's fair to claim that Britain has virtually no liberal rule of law.
Russia arrests less people for speech on the Internet than UK.
How many North Koreans do you think get arrested for speech?
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You are wrong. Those data points are out-of-context and do not reflect the realities of speaking out in Russia.
This stat is half cherry-picked and half lied about. Comparing UK and Russia, two fundamentally different societies with different levels of censorship online is intellectually dishonest.
What are the non-cherrypicked numbers then? Accounting for population Uk is still probably ahead.
I don't think you can realistically compare the two countries in question because it doesn't take in consideration outside factors. There are two variables:
My argument is that in Russia, due to the chilling effects of propaganda, astroturfing, arrests, assassinations, difference in treatment in prisons, general depoliticization of society, people in Russia are less likely to say something that attracts the attention of the government, especially using their real name. This isn't the free speech as you conceive of it in more liberal societies. This likely accounts for #2 being lower per capita in Russia than in UK in general - people know that you shouldn't speak out in a way that can attract unwanted attention.
Additionally, specifically due to section 127 including harassment, I'd argue that you'd need to go through each case to determine whether the government was punishing someone for exercising their right to free speech. This likely accounts for #1 being lower than reported in the original tweet for UK. I don't have modern data, I'd expect with the riots this would be higher than in 2017.
So do raw numbers really matter? My answer is: "No, they don't. The two cultures, social norms and political situations are fundamentally different".
Chilling effects apply in UK too, obviously. Major point of these laws is to get people to shut up.
The range of things that I can safely say online as a Brit is considerably wider than the range of things an American with a W-2 job can say if they want to keep it. (I acknowledge Trump may change this).
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Perhaps, but there is a difference. In Russia, you can criticize the government online if you want to. You can talk shit about Muslims or browns or whatever if you want to, you can call for Russia to be Russian. Some kinds of criticizing the government and some kinds of racial/nativist speech are technically illegal, but this is rarely prosecuted. However, if you do these things and you obtain a significant following, there is a pretty good chance that you will be killed or, at best, just jailed for many years. The UK might be dystopian in many ways, and people get jailed there for speech, but I've never heard of anyone there being literally killed for speech.
The guy who left a bacon sandwich in front of a mosque or something did die in prison, but that's the closest I can think of so far.
While he didn't die, if you saw the before and after pics of Tommy Robinson, it's clear they put him through quite an ordeal.
Was that Peterborough Prison?
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