From Defect to Dangerous: Has the Door Opened for Recognition of an Addiction-based Defence in Canadian Criminal Law?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
En ce qui concerne l’examen de la responsabilité, le droit criminel canadien utilise un concept simpliste de la dépendance. Il présume que l’utilisation continue de drogues ou d’alcool par un toxicomane est volontaire et délibérée, sans tenir compte de l’impact potentiel de vulnérabilités neurobiologiques ou de troubles mentaux concomitants qui influencent la volonté et la maîtrise de soi. Par conséquent, il n’est pas surprenant que la responsabilité criminelle ne comprenne pas d’accommodement pour les réalités cliniques de personnes accusées qui se trouvent dans cette situation. De manière significative, en 2011, dans sa décision dans l’affaire Rc. Bouchard-Lebrun, la Coursuprême du Canada a signalé la volonté de changer cette approche. Elle a suggéré que, si un accusé risquait d’être dangereux à cause de sa dépendance, une défense de non-responsabilité criminelle pour cause de troubles mentaux pourrait être utilisée (« NRCCTM »). L’accusé pourrait ensuite être transféré du système correctionnel au système de psychiatrie médico-légale. Il est sans doute évident qu’un traitement dans un emplacement de soins de santé serait bénéfique à une personne cherchant à s’affranchir de sa dépendance. De plus, dans la mesure où l’usage de substances et la criminalité sont reliés, la sécuritédu public serait sûrement améliorée par la supervision d’anciens toxicomanes en vertu de la partie XX.1 du Code criminel. Il faut tout de même faire attention. Cela deviendrait inquiétant si la défense de NRCCTM venait à être utilisée – peut-être involontairement – comme alternative à la détention préventive des populations dépendantes. Abstract: For purposes of liability assessment, Canadian criminal law proceeds on a simplistic conceptualization of addiction. It presumes that the continued use of drugs or alcohol on the part of an addict is willed and deliberate, without regard to the potential impact of neurobiological vulnerabilities or concomitant mental disorders that impair volition and self-control. Not surprisingly, as a result, there is no accommodation within the law of criminal responsibility for the clinical realities of accused persons with these conditions. Significantly, in its 2011 decision in R v Bouchard-Lebrun, the Supreme Court of Canada signalled a willingness to vary this approach. It suggested that, if there were a risk of future dangerousness on the part of the accused by reason of addiction, resort might be had to the defence of not-criminally-responsible-by-reason-of-mental-disorder (“NCRMD”), and the accused might then be diverted from the correctional system to the forensic psychiatric system. It is perhaps obvious that a treatment-oriented response in a health care setting would benefit individuals seeking to overcome addiction. Moreover, to the extent that substance use and criminality are linked, public safety surely would be enhanced through the supervision of recovering addicts under the terms of Part XX.1 of the Criminal Code. Care must nonetheless be taken. It would be a matter of serious concern if the defence of NCRMD came to be used – unwittingly perhaps – as an alternative pathway for the preventive detention of addict populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.027 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".