Canada

There is pearl clutching every time an article about an NCR determination is shared here, and it shows how much the average person doesn't know about our legal system. So here's an overview of Not Criminally Responsible:

The 6 months mentioned in this article was the time taken to assess them, ensure they're fit to stand trial, and the trial itself. It's not a standard time, these cases usually take forever.

Assuming the person is found fit to stand trial, the judge will remand them to the forensic psychiatry department where they will be assessed 24/7 by a team of senior psychiatric professionals. No one working here is fresh out of school; they all have years of experience, and have expertise in symptoms and treatments of mental health issues. They can dell the difference between a personality disorder and psychosis, and because there is always a team of professionals around, they figure out if someone is trying to fake an illness pretty damn quickly.

The unit staff are tasked with many things, including stabilising the individual prior to their court appointment whenever possible. More central to the main NCR conversation is them determining whether the person was aware of their actions, and the consequences of their actions at the time they committed the crime. If they were aware of both or either, they are not considered NCR. Once the assessment is complete, the lead psychiatrist will be summoned to court to present their findings and expert testimony. With that information, the judge will determine whether the individual is NCR or not.

Assuming they are found NCR, they are then under the purview of a board which consists of 5 people: the chair; who has a legal background (judge/lawyer), a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, a layperson, and one other individual who can be a second of any of the other 4 roles.

The board determines the requirements to keep the community safe, as well as what is needed to keep the individual healthy. This means the board decides where this person can live, who they must live with (someone responsible for them), where they can go, who they can see, what they can do, what they may purchase (if relevant to their charge), what they may own, what medications and treatments they must undergo, how often they must be in contact with forensic psychiatry supports, their lawyer, and the board. None of that is optional, and if they fail to comply, either by choice or illness, the police will bring them back to remand.

Unlike a guilty charge, there is no end date for being NCR. This will be this person's life for the foreseeable future, until the board determines that they have been mentally stable, compliant, and self-managing for a long enough time as to no longer be considered a risk. For anyone who has experience with the illnesses/conditions that tend to contribute to these situations (psychosis, dementia, certain types of brain damage, etc.), they can attest that these illnesses do not -do- stability. This means most people who are NCR have their lives controlled by a board for a very, very long time. Much longer than the jail term would have been, had they not been found NCR.

This isn't the "get out of jail free" card media has portrayed it to be. And if you made it to the bottom of this essay, congrats: you now know a crap tonne more about how our legal system works than the average Canadian.