Leading article: Draconian legislation is not the answer
17th Nov 2006, 06:04 GMT
Yesterday's report on the case of John Barrett, the paranoid schizophrenic who killed a stranger two years ago, has once again thrust the question of how we should deal with the mentally ill into the spotlight. Barrett, who had a history of violence, absconded from a secure unit in a south London psychiatric hospital, where he was a voluntary patient, in September 2004. The next day he travelled to Richmond Park where he stabbed to death a passing cyclist, Denis Finnegan. Barrett afterwards claimed that voices in his head had instructed him to kill.