There’s been an awful lot of fuss and some political exploitation of the news that the perpetrator of the Southport Atrocity is being moved from prison to the secure mental hospital at Broadmoor.

There’s an awful lot of outrage, some real and some confected for political ends that has been emitted over this news with a lot of people ignoring what should have been a key fact.

That fact is that this monster should have gone into secure mental health accommodation long before he committed his terrible crimes. Whilst a large part of the blame for him not being put into a secure facility, where he would not have been able to commit the mass murders that he did, can be shouldered by his parents, who hid the extent of this monster’s mental illness from the authorities, the rest of the blame needs to be put on the British state.

If we had a functioning mental health system and one that was not grossly infected by identity politics ideology and a system that was properly run and funded, then it’s quite possible that this monster could have been detained under the various mental health acts before he had the chance to kill. Detaining him when it must have been clear that he was a time bomb waiting to go off would have ensured that he and his fantasies of extreme violence were contained within the walls of a secure mental hospital.

One of the things that struck me about the Southport case, apart of course from the bestial nature of the attack, was how agencies including mental health ones could have acted on the danger posed by Rudakubana but did not. Teachers, social workers, mental health agencies, they all failed to grasp the nature of Rudakubana’s severe and most likely intractable mental illnesses. All these individuals and agencies gave Rudakubana too many benefits of the doubt. From what I can gather Rudakubana’s severe mental illness and violent nature was highlighted in documents such as his education and health care plan (EHCP) but nothing was done to intervene, when intervention should have been a priority on the grounds of public safety.

If they had all understood that here was a young man who was going to kill at some point, then he could have been detained under mental health legislation and would never have been put in the position where he could kill. Whilst it is clear that Rudakubana was the man who wielded the weapon that killed and injured children and adults, it’s also very obvious to me that he would not be in the position where he could have killed had he been detained due to the nature of his mental illness.

As for those who are screaming about how he should have been executed I have to say that it would be unlikely that he would have been executed even when Britain did have the death penalty. This is because there has been, since the mid 19^th century and to a lesser extent before, a policy that those whose mental illnesses have given them the minds of beasts are confined to either prison or latterly to mental health facilities when they commit murders. The M’Naughten Rules, the various Criminal Lunatics and similar Acts and the 1957 Homicide Act would have all kept him away from the gallows. The 1933 Children and Young Persons Act would also have prevented him from being executed as he committed his crime whilst under the age of 18.

Axel Rudakubana is a monster and he deserves to be confined for the rest of his natural life but we should not forget that had not the State failed to manage this monster properly when it was clear that a monster he was likely to be, then he would never have been in a position to carry out his attacks. The State failed here and children died because of that failure and that’s the key point that everyone seems to be missing in the current outrage over the transfer of this monster to Broadmoor.

He should have been in secure mental health accommodation long before he carried out the Southport Atrocity but he was not and a large portion of the blame for him not being caged earlier lies with the British state.

The State failed and children died and others were gravely injured because of their mishandling of Rudakubana and that is what too many people are missing when it comes to the Rudakubana case.

Link

History of the death penalty and insanity.

https://capitalpunishmentuk.org/insanity-and-the-death-penalty/