The offender was found to be not criminally responsible due to extreme mental health problem, was put into secure treatment for long time, and eventually considered safe to be in society. Locking him up further would be purely revenge not justice.
It's long in the context of how much mental health treatment they can have provided him over that time.
If 7 years is how long it took to be sure he wouldn't reoffend, why go longer? It would be a waste of taxpayer money, it would worsen his life for no benefit, it wouldn't solve anything for society, and it wouldn't even be useful as a deterrent because I'm pretty sure he wasn't thinking about ROI of crime vs. potential punishment when committing the crime considering he believed God was ordering him to do it, and he didn't deny having done it.
If mental health treatment were so far advanced that his problems could have been 100% cured within a month, I would have supported his being released after a month.
Because we're Canadians, and that is the mentality that we take, as surprising as that might be to other cultures, we're not particularly vengeful people, and especially so in the context of mental health.
Letting him out definitely won't benefit society. The recidivism for "mentally insane" convicts is extremely high.
It feels good, but it's like letting a drunk driver get back behind the wheel after they show remorse. The chances that they get in another DWI (and hurt someone) is high.
It's also why we have sex offender registries. The recidivism is high.
I'd love to read the papers you've consumed that lead you to this consultation if you have them handy. A lot of what we see in Canada is in fact the exact opposite in the context of mental health, so I'm very curious to know where you formed this opinion from.
