Over the past decade or so, Canada's criminal justice system has had to deal with escalating numbers of mentally disordered offenders.

At the provincial level, a number of provinces have implemented "diversion" programs. These programs are vehicles for re-connecting mentally disordered individuals with the civil mental health care systems from which they have become disconnected. In 1992, the Parliament of Canada introduced sweeping changes to the Criminal Code which reflected a new approach to the problem of the mentally ill offender. These changes were based on a growing appreciation that treating mentally ill offenders like other offenders failed to address properly the interests of either the offenders or the public. The emphasis in the legislation and in the judicial decisions which have followed it is on achieving the twin goals of protecting the public and treating the mentally ill offender fairly and appropriately.

This purpose of this book is to inform, promote understanding, and demystify. The book follows the logical and temporal sequence of the issues a mentally disordered accused is likely to encounter from arrest to sentencing—or in the case of an accused found not criminally responsible, until that point when he or she is absolutely discharged by a provincial or territorial review board. It provides a succinct overview of the key topics that judges, crown and defence counsel, and mental health providers are likely to encounter in their day-to-day work with mentally disordered offenders. It brings together psychiatric/clinical information with key legal principles, case law, and applicable statutory provisions; it thereby allows the reader to access relevant theoretical and practical information from the disciplines of both psychiatry and law. Collaboration between the two disciplines will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in facilitating the provision of service to this afflicted and invariably underserviced population.

An earlier version of this work entitled The Mentally Disordered Offender was written specifically for the National Judicial Institute's "Electronic Bench Book" series.

Hy Bloom, BA, LL.B., MD, FRCP(C) is a director of workplace.calm, inc., consultants in Workplace Conflict and Violence Prevention and Management, and is the Managing Associate of the Central Branch of the PSILEX Group, Consultants in Behavioural Sciences and the Law. He is also a part-time staff member of the Law and Mental Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McMaster University. Dr. Bloom received his LL.B. from McGill University in 1978, and his MD from McMaster University in 1984. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1980. He has published on a number of topics in psychiatry and the law. He has co-authored one book, Defending Mentally Disordered Persons (Toronto: Carswell, 1995), and co-edited a book, entitled A Practical Guide to Mental Health Capacity and Consent Law of Ontario (Toronto: Carswell, 1996). Dr. Bloom has served as a psychiatric consultant to a number of public and private sector organizations on the subject of workplace conflict and violence, and has lectured and written on the topic.

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The Honourable Mr. Justice Richard D. Schneider, BSc, MA, PhD, LLB, LLM, CPsych, is a Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice, Deputy Judge of the Territorial Court of Yukon, Chair of the Ontario Review Board, and Alternate Chair of the Nunavut Review Board. He was previously a criminal defence lawyer and certified clinical psychologist. He was counsel to the Ontario Review Board from 1994 to 2000 and was certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a specialist in criminal litigation. Justice Schneider is also an Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto; a “Specially Appointed Researcher” at the China University of Political Science and Law Criminal Psychology Research Centre. He was named Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological Association in 2002. Justice Schneider’s private practice was generally limited to the representation of mentally disordered accused, and a great deal of his time has been spent presiding at the Mental Health Court in Toronto. His major research interests are competency and criminal responsibility, and he has published extensively in the area of mental disorder and the law. Recent books include Mental Health Courts: Decriminalizing the Mentally Ill (2007, with H. Bloom & M. Heerema); Annotated Ontario Mental Health Statutes, 4th ed (2007); The Lunatic and the Lords (2009); Law and Mental Disorder: A Comprehensive and Practical Approach (2013, with H. Bloom); Mental Disorder and the Law: A Primer for Legal and Mental Health Professionals, 2d ed (2017, with H. Bloom); Fitness to Stand Trial: Fairness First and Foremost (2018, with H. Bloom); and The Death of a Butterfly: Mental Health Court Diaries (2019) (all published by Irwin Law/Delve Books).

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