Nowit is announced that we are to lock up psychopaths and forcibly treat
psychotics, a matter upon which the BMA ethics people have reasonable
misgivings, I thought of a new tla to add to NNT and NNH and so on.
Given the mission, should we accept it, of locking up psychopaths who have
not killed anyone yet so they don't kill people, how might we assess the
threshold? Not so much the diagnosis, the Home Secretary has already
decided that we can diagnose psychopaths, but the level of risk.
Looking at a particular person we might conclude on some basis that in a 5
year period (or a lifetime?), given 1000 people just like this, we would
expect that one of them would murder. IE a NNK of 1000.
Where the threshold is set is a matter for other disputes of course, but
incarceration at an NNK or 1000 or 100 or even 10 seems like the sort of
thing that lawyers for the alleged other 999/99/9 will have a field day on,
probably at doctors' expense.
Anyway, I havn't found a previous mention of NNK, and the need seems to be
here, unless there is a better idea?
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