WRITTEN BY CHAT GPT
The following is a fictional set of stories generated by Chat GPT prompted by me, Adom Patchett, based on my experiences in East Coast Forensic Hospital. During a psychotic episode, I set fire to my mother’s house when she wasn’t home; this led me down the road into Forensics. I’m not a serial arsonist; this was a one-time thing, and it’s been eight years since it happened.
Chapter 01 – “The Grandson”
They called him “Peter the Poet” on the unit—not because he wrote poetry, but because he talked like he was always about to. Flowery, articulate, oddly serene. You wouldn’t guess by looking at him that he’d bashed his grandparents’ skulls in with a fireplace poker.
He told the psychiatrists it was God’s will. That his grandparents were going to “turn into dogs” and “eat his heart out” while he slept. Delusions. A textbook case. The court found him Not Criminally Responsible by Reason of Mental Disorder (NCRMD), and he was placed into forensic care.
Now he walks the halls like a man forgiven. Pressed jeans, slick hair, smooth voice. He plays chess with staff, volunteers in group, makes origami out of meal napkins. He’s polite, charming, never raises his voice.
It took two years of antipsychotics and therapy before the review board gave him passes—first escorted ones, then unescorted. He’d walk to Tim Horton’s. The staff saw that as reintegration. The patients saw it for what it was: a loophole.
No one wanted to say what everyone suspected. That Peter was using his weekend passes to smuggle in contraband. Not phones, not cigarettes—pills. Real ones. Percocets. Oxys. Shit that sells on the ward for a pack of smokes, a snack tray, or someone’s soul.
He paid with inheritance money—the same money left to him by the grandparents he murdered.
You could tell who he’d supplied: their moods shifted, their speech slurred, their eyes dilated or half-closed. Some were addicts before they ever came to forensics; some got addicted inside. No one snitched—this was a locked hospital, but it had its own underworld.
Nursing started finding orange crumbs in the toilets. A guy overdosed in the seclusion room. The security team got involved. They strip-searched everyone after visits but never caught Peter. The pills were never on him. He had people on the outside—a cousin or a friend who thought he’d been framed.
Eventually, one of the patients he dosed confessed in a moment of withdrawal: “Peter’s got pills in the spine of a bible. Hollowed it out himself.”
But even then, Peter denied it. Said it was a setup. Said he was being scapegoated for being high-functioning.
The truth? He knew exactly what he was doing.
And when they finally revoked his passes, he just smiled and said,
“Well, I guess it’s back to chess and napkin art for now.”
Chapter 02 – “The Repeat Offender”
They called him J, short for Jermaine, but it might as well have stood for Joker—because no matter how many times the system caught him red-handed, he played it like a joke that never stopped being funny.
The first time he got caught smuggling cocaine into the forensic hospital, it was sloppy. A patient overdosed in the washroom at 2:14 a.m.—nose crusted white, face purple, pulse gone. The unit went into full lockdown. Strip searches. Shakedowns. And somehow, they found it: a tiny bag of powder tucked in the hem of Jermaine’s sweatpants.
He got his passes pulled, room searches increased, no more rec therapy, no more canteen. Standard disciplinary script.
But then came the performance.
He went quiet. Respectful. Started praying in the corner. Apologized to the nurses for “the stress” he’d caused. He told the doctor he was spiraling because he hadn’t seen his mom in months. He even made a drawing of Jesus holding hands with a cartoon cocaine rock and gave it to the chaplain.
By the next review board, the psychiatrists were praising his “insight.”
Passes reinstated.
Three weeks later, he was back at it. Same routine—late-night bathroom sniff parties, coded wall taps, watching the guards on rotation like a hawk. He even had a new move: stashing the coke inside the battery casing of a Sony Discman someone donated to the ward.
He got cocky. Someone told. Another lockdown. Another bag found—this time hidden in a tube of toothpaste.
Passes gone again.
This time, staff were furious. Nursing notes had phrases like “manipulative affect,” “calculating,” “triangulates staff.” But Jermaine didn’t blink. He laid low. Did puzzles. Attended every group. Faked tears in trauma therapy.
At his next review, he gave a speech:
“I understand now that I used drugs to fill the hole my trauma left behind. I want to heal.”
They believed him.
Passes reinstated.
It became a cycle.
Offense. Caught. Contrition. Therapy talk. Review board. Reinstated. Repeat.
Every time someone called him out, he’d lean in with that warm, charismatic smile and say,
“A man’s allowed to change. Isn’t that the whole point of this place?”
He was caught a third time with a condom full of coke stuffed into a jar of peanut butter. Fourth time was a family member slipping it into a Bible with pages glued together. Fifth time? They never figured that one out. He got sloppy again, and someone overdosed. He just shrugged.
They kept revoking, reinstating, revoking.
Someone joked he should have a punch card: “Ten smuggles and your next pass is free.”
The guards knew. The nurses knew. The psychiatrists suspected. But the system loved a redemption arc. Jermaine knew how to play the long game—stay good just long enough, sprinkle some remorse, cry in front of the right staff member.
He’d say,
“I’m a work in progress,”
and the unit would hold its breath… until the next party in the bathroom stall.
Chapter 03 – “The Acid Test”
It started with a laugh.
One of those echoing, maniacal, contagious ones that didn’t belong to anyone sober. It came from Room 6, right after lights out, and within five minutes, the entire north wing of the unit was vibrating with weird energy.
Not the usual tension. This was psychedelic.
A guy in Room 9 was doing somersaults on his mattress. Another was trying to feed pudding to the wall. Someone else had his hands in the air like he was holding invisible reins and galloping across the floor.
Staff started noticing the signs during 2 a.m. rounds. One nurse peeked in and saw a patient staring at the ceiling whispering,
“The clock is melting. God is here. He’s got giraffe legs.”
Classic trip talk.
They called in security. A sweep of the unit turned up nothing—no rolled-up tabs, no foil, no droppers, no wrappers. But someone had clearly smuggled in LSD, and several patients had taken it.
What really tipped them off? A guy in a hospital gown pacing the hallway completely naked, declaring,
“I AM A SANDWICH OF TIME!”
By morning, six patients were clearly still under the effects—dilated pupils, disorganized thoughts, bodies twitching in rhythm to music no one else could hear.
The Nurse Manager, furious, called an emergency huddle with the psych team. The order was immediate:
“Full panel urine drug screens. Every patient on the unit. Randoms starting today.”
The lab techs rolled in with cups and gloves. One by one, the patients were marched to the bathroom, accompanied by guards. Some laughed through the process. Others acted confused. One guy cried because he couldn’t remember how to pee on command.
Jermaine, the usual suspect for any contraband, had a perfectly clean sample. Which only made the staff more paranoid—because someone else was holding the bag now.
Whispers spread through the unit like smoke:
- “It came in through a Bible again.”
- “Nope, someone melted it onto a stamp.”
- “It was dropped into a water bottle during gym rec.”
No one really knew. But someone had enough LSD for half the unit to watch the walls breathe and cry about colors.
The test results came back three days later. Four positives for LSD. Two inconclusive. One urine sample mysteriously disappeared en route to the lab.
Staff added “hallucinogen use” to the charts. Revoked passes. Cancelled visits. Added “chemical dependency group” to every treatment plan, like it would matter.
Meanwhile, the guy who started laughing in Room 6? He kept his mouth shut.
When a staff member asked him what happened, he smiled gently and said,
“Maybe the walls are just always breathing, and we only sometimes notice.”
Chapter 04 – “The Airing Court”
His name was Kyle, but everyone called him “Brotherman.”
Not because he was anyone’s brother—he wasn’t even that friendly—but because that’s what he called everyone else.
“Hey Brotherman,” he’d say, grinning through half-yellow teeth, eyes glazed over, never quite grounded in the moment.
Kyle was in for second-degree murder—stabbed his best friend in the chest during a fight over a girl and a game console. Both were high. Only Kyle survived.
At trial, he barely spoke. His lawyer told the court that he “lost time,” that his psychosis blurred the memory. The Crown wanted prison. The psychiatrist testified “NCR”—Not Criminally Responsible. He’d been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. He was hearing voices when it happened. The review board agreed.
Now he lived on the inside of a forensic hospital, wandering the halls like a man with unfinished business and unlimited time.
Kyle didn’t join groups. Didn’t do art therapy. Rarely spoke in sessions. But he never caused problems.
And in forensic psych, if you don’t cause problems, you get privileges.
Every afternoon at 3 p.m., Kyle would walk to the airing court—a bleak concrete yard wrapped in fencing and topped with barbed wire. It had a basketball net, two old benches, and a few patches of struggling grass that refused to die.
That’s where he smoked his weed.
No lighter, of course. Lighters weren’t allowed. He’d use a bit of copper wire twisted into a battery casing, create a short circuit, and light his joint with a glowing thread like some kind of prison MacGyver. Or he’d trade for a contraband Bic from someone on a neighboring unit.
He smoked slow. Peacefully. Sometimes in full view of the cameras. Sometimes hidden behind the “therapeutic garden” staff had tried to plant a year ago.
The guards knew. The nurses knew. But unless someone complained or coughed in the wrong direction, no one did anything. Kyle didn’t cause scenes. He always returned to the unit on time. He never failed a urine test—because he never got tested.
One day, a staff psychologist saw him out there, exhaling smoke with one leg propped on the bench like a philosopher.
She asked,
“Do you think your friend would forgive you?”
Kyle looked at her for a moment, blinking slowly, then said,
“Only if I roll him one.”
She reported him. Kyle got his airing court privileges revoked for two weeks.
After that, he started baking pot into muffins, claiming they were from his aunt on a weekend visit. The airing court wasn’t his only domain—he had backups.
The thing about Kyle was—he never apologized. He never asked for his privileges back.
He just waited. They always came back.
Chapter 05 – “Code White”
Her name was Cassandra, but the staff chart always said Cassie (⚠️)—the caution symbol meant aggressive history. Anyone working with her was supposed to read the incident log before every shift.
Cassie was only 23, but she’d already racked up a list of violent episodes longer than her discharge summary. She came to forensics after stabbing a social worker with a pen during a bail hearing. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and schizoaffective disorder, she was a storm system no one could predict.
She could be magnetic, almost childlike—offering stickers, braiding hair, crying when someone read poetry aloud. But she could also go dead behind the eyes, and then all bets were off.
The nurse was four months pregnant.
Everyone knew. Everyone was excited for her—her second child, a girl. Her uniform just barely concealed the curve of her stomach now. She was one of the kind ones, the type that brought extra toast for patients who missed breakfast and fought for outside passes during rounds.
Cassie had been doing okay. No restraints for six weeks. Attending dialectical behavior therapy. Drawing flowers in art group. The staff let their guard down.
It started small.
Cassie wanted a second piece of cake from the lunch tray. The nurse gently said,
“Sorry sweetie, that’s not your diet order.”
Cassie laughed awkwardly. “You’re always judging me.”
“No judgment, just following your plan,” the nurse replied, trying to de-escalate.
Cassie stared at her belly.
“Is that why you’re always looking at me like I’m a threat? Because you’ve got something worth protecting now?”
The nurse blinked.
“Cassie, let’s take a breath. Let’s walk to the TV room and cool off.”
But Cassie didn’t want to cool off. She wanted to explode.
In a single second, she lunged.
Grabbed a plastic tray. Swung it like a weapon. It hit the nurse square in the face. Blood burst from her lip. She screamed, turned to run, and Cassie was on her—punching her in the side, near her stomach, wild and blind. The nurse collapsed, shielding herself.
Code White.
Corrections came sprinting.
Cassie was tackled, cuffed, dragged down the hallway kicking and laughing, howling,
“NOW YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO FEEL POWERLESS!”
The nurse was rushed to the hospital.
The baby was okay. Barely.
Staff went quiet after that. Angry. Conflicted. Some said Cassie should be transferred to max security. Others said she was a victim too—of trauma, of system failure, of a life no one protected.
But on the unit, the lines were drawn. Staff became tense. Less smiling. More distance. Everyone looked over their shoulders.
Cassie was placed in isolation for 21 days. No group. No airing court. No visits.
And when she came back to the ward, she said nothing. Not sorry. Not remorse.
She just sat in the corner, folding paper into stars, and humming lullabies out of key.
Chapter 06 – “Unit Transfer”
The man’s name was Randy.
Thirty-four years old. Bipolar I disorder with a record of methamphetamine-induced psychosis. Paranoid. Tattooed knuckles. A former construction worker with a temper that didn’t just run hot—it boiled over at random.
Randy had come into forensics after attacking a neighbor with a crowbar. He claimed the guy was sending “frequencies” through the walls. The courts accepted a diagnosis and declared him Not Criminally Responsible. His file was full of warnings, but also full of hope. “High response to medication.” “Stable in structure.” “Potential for reintegration.”
The unit was cautiously optimistic.
Then he met Jules.
Jules was 29. Openly gay. Smart, quick, sarcastic. He wore his hair short and neat and walked like he didn’t care if you had a problem with it. He was in for fraud and arson. No history of violence. No psychosis. Just trauma, addiction, and too many wrong turns.
He’d been in the system longer than Randy and knew how to survive. He also knew how to push buttons. Not because he wanted trouble—but because he didn’t believe in hiding.
Randy hated that.
It started small.
Whispers behind Jules’ back. Remarks under the breath:
“Freak.”
“Sicko.”
“Keep that shit away from me.”
Staff stepped in once or twice. Jules shrugged it off. “He’s just threatened,” he said. “Let him talk.”
But words weren’t enough for Randy.
One afternoon in the airing court, Randy cornered Jules while staff were distracted breaking up another dispute.
He hit him. Fast. Brutal. Repeatedly. Fists to the face, to the ribs. Jules fell. Randy kicked him in the head.
The guards got there thirty seconds too late.
Blood everywhere.
Jules had a broken orbital bone, two cracked ribs, and lost a tooth. He had to be sedated to stop shaking. One staff member who saw the assault vomited outside the fence line.
Randy didn’t run. Didn’t explain. He just said:
“That faggot needed to learn a lesson.”
The response from the hospital was immediate.
Zero tolerance for hate-based violence.
Randy was emergency transferred to maximum security—a high-risk forensic unit behind two levels of lockdown. No TV room. No group therapy. Just observation windows and one hour of fresh air a day in a cement cage.
His passes were revoked indefinitely. Review board recommendations stated:
“Patient demonstrates persistent homophobic ideology paired with unpredictable violence. Deemed a risk to the therapeutic environment.”
He would remain in max for at least five years, subject to annual review.
Staff talked quietly for weeks afterward. Some said Jules shouldn’t have taunted him. Others said Randy should never have been placed in general population.
Jules healed. Slowly. He returned to the unit but stayed quiet now. Kept his head down.
He didn’t joke anymore.
When asked how he felt about Randy, he said:
“I’ve been attacked before. I survived that too.”
But he never went back to the airing court alone again.
Chapter 07 – “Quiet Hours”
His name was Ben.
Thirty-two. Slight frame. Schizophrenia, long-standing. First admitted to psych care at sixteen. In and out of group homes and locked units for more than half his life.
He’d once been a guitar player. His sister used to bring photos of him playing on stage—before the voices came. Now he barely spoke at all. Just sat by the window, staring at trees like they might blink back at him.
Ben was in forensics for assault with a weapon. It wasn’t serious by street standards—he swung a broomstick at a stranger in the mall. No one was hurt. But when police found him, he was shouting at angels in the sky and trying to rip his own shirt off because he thought it was made of insects.
The judge ruled him Not Criminally Responsible, and he was placed in medium-security forensic care.
On paper, Ben was stable. Compliant with meds. Attended groups. No aggression. But something about him always felt fragile, like his whole soul was held together with threadbare tape.
The decline happened over weeks.
He stopped eating much. Spoke less. Smiled never. He asked for earplugs one night—not because of noise, but because “the thoughts were louder than the staff.”
He said it with a kind of exhausted honesty that made the nurse pause.
His doctor upped his medication. The staff logged it as “responsive but emotionally distant.” A psych tech noted that he had been pacing more often, especially near the walls.
At 3:17 a.m. one night, a patient on the same unit hit the emergency call button.
“Something’s wrong with Ben,” he said.
“He’s… hurting himself.”
Staff rushed in.
Ben was in his room, bleeding from the forehead, having slammed it full force into the concrete wall at least a dozen times. Blood spattered the floor. His body was convulsing, then limp.
His skull was fractured. He was unconscious. Breathing, barely.
They restrained him. Called Code Blue. Emergency ambulance.
He was taken to the local hospital with brain swelling.
He never woke up.
The report would call it “self-injurious behavior resulting in fatal outcome.”
But the patients called it what it was: suicide.
They talked about it for weeks.
Some were angry.
Some were scared.
Some said, “he’d been giving signs.”
One nurse broke down during a staff debrief.
“I thought he was just quiet,” she whispered.
The hospital added more checks after that. Upped observations. Re-trained staff on suicide prevention.
But the wall he died on? They never painted it over.
A thin crack still ran through the paint where his head had hit again and again and again, trying to escape something no one else could see.
Chapter 08 – “The Exit Plan”
His name was Nathan Bell.
Convicted of second-degree murder, then found Not Criminally Responsible by the courts after a high-profile psych evaluation. He stabbed his coworker twenty-three times with a chisel on a job site—said the man was stealing his thoughts and had “demons in his blood.” The psychiatrists testified he was deeply psychotic. The jury believed them.
He was sent to forensic care instead of prison.
At first, he resisted everything. Wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t eat. Refused meds. Spent months in seclusion screaming into the dark.
But over the years—four of them, to be exact—Nathan changed.
He took his meds. Read books. Kept journals. Attended groups. His psych reports began to describe him as “insightful,” “calm,” and “goal-oriented.” The review board started granting slow, careful privileges: supervised passes, group outings, then unsupervised walks to the coffee shop across the street.
Each one, he returned to on time.
By Year 6, staff were saying things like:
“Nathan’s one of our success stories.”
“He’s really worked hard to stabilize.”
“Rehabilitation is possible.”
He started talking about travel—visiting his sister in Europe. Said he wanted to rebuild the bridge to his family. Said he was ready to start processing the harm he caused.
His psychiatrist backed him. Social worker vouched. Risk assessments were cautious but positive. The review board approved a 72-hour international travel pass, with the condition he return for review on day four.
He never came back.
Flight records confirmed he boarded the plane. Arrived in Lisbon, Portugal. Met with someone—his “sister”—but she wasn’t family. She was a former pen-pal from a schizophrenia support forum. She’d moved there five years ago. There were no further records after that.
Interpol issued a red notice. Canadian forensics notified embassies. The media got wind of it and ran headlines like:
“Killer Disappears on Mental Health Leave”
“System Failure: Murderer Vanishes on Government Pass”
The hospital issued a statement:
“At the time of approval, the patient met all conditions required for gradual reintegration and demonstrated no known risk of absconding.”
But inside the unit, everyone was furious.
“How do you get a passport when you killed someone?”
“Who the hell thought international leave was appropriate?”
“He’s probably sitting on a beach laughing at us.”
The psychiatrist was placed under review. The review board procedures were updated. International travel was removed as a privilege in all active forensic files for at least a year.
Nathan Bell?
Never found.
Some say he changed his name.
Some say he lives quiet in a village, teaching English.
Some say the psychosis was fake all along.
But the truth is, he waited six years to walk out the front door… and never look back.
Chapter 09 – “The Price of Trust”
His name was Devon Marks.
Thirty-seven. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder and antisocial traits. He had done time in prison before his NCR designation—stabbed a man outside a liquor store for “disrespecting” him, then claimed he was “possessed by the devil.” Evaluated. Medicated. Transferred to forensics.
He was a master of the system. Knew the language.
“I take full responsibility for my actions.”
“I’ve worked hard on my insight.”
“I want to give back and rebuild trust.”
He quoted therapy workbooks. Cried during group. Kept journals about forgiveness. The staff debated, hesitated, but over time, they gave him a shot.
He earned weekend passes, short ones at first—accompanied trips with staff. Then family visits. Eventually, unsupervised passes.
He always came back on time. Clean clothes. No incident. Smile on his face.
Until the last one.
On a Friday morning, he signed out for an overnight pass to see his cousin—someone staff never fully vetted. He said they were close. That she was helping him reconnect with his community.
He left at 10:15 a.m.
By 2 p.m., he was in a public housing complex smoking crack in a bathroom with a group of old friends. They gave it to him for free. Said it was his “return to the real world.”
He got high. Paranoid. Wild-eyed. Started hearing voices again, even though he’d been med-compliant for months.
But he still returned on time.
Smiling.
Eyes clear enough to pass a superficial check.
He even said thank you to the guard at reception.
No one knew he was still high when he walked through the unit doors.
An hour later, he was in the TV room with another patient—Kyle, a quiet man with autism and a history of petty offenses. He made puzzles. He never raised his voice.
Devon sat beside him and stared for a long time.
Then he said,
“You’re laughing at me.”
Kyle looked up, confused. “I wasn’t.”
Devon stood.
“You think I’m weak?”
Before Kyle could respond, Devon punched him full force in the face. Then again. And again.
He dragged Kyle from the chair, threw him to the ground, and beat him until he stopped moving.
It took four staff and two security guards to pull him off.
Kyle was unconscious.
Broken jaw. Swelling in the brain.
Emergency surgery.
Devon was still ranting when they restrained him—nonsense about demons, betrayal, and someone living inside his head.
His passes were revoked permanently. He was transferred to a high-security forensic ward, no access to groups, no access to communal spaces, no unsupervised time ever again.
Staff were shaken. Some blamed themselves. Others said, “we knew this would happen.”
The hospital issued a statement:
“We are reviewing our pass policy and re-assessing risk protocols for all community reintegration activities.”
Kyle survived—but was never the same. He didn’t speak for three weeks after the assault.
The psychiatrist who approved Devon’s pass took a leave of absence.
And Devon?
He sat in isolation, muttering to himself, staring at the wall, occasionally laughing at nothing.
Chapter 10 – “The Mushroom Panic”
It started with giggling.
Not just regular boredom-induced laughter, but the deep, cosmic kind—the kind that makes a man laugh at his shoelaces for twenty minutes and declare the ceiling tiles to be “souls waiting to be born.”
It was a Tuesday evening in Unit D, and the entire wing was vibrating with something off. One patient was trying to interview a chair. Another was crying because his hand “knew too much.”
The nurse on shift, Vanessa, immediately suspected drugs.
When she approached one of the more stable patients, he whispered:
“We’re all part of the mushroom now.”
She blinked.
“What mushroom?”
“The one behind the curtain of God’s eyelid.”
That was enough.
Vanessa hit the panic button. Called the charge nurse. The charge nurse called security. The nurse manager called corrections. And by morning, the entire hospital was on lockdown.
The Crackdown
Corrections went through every single room.
Mattresses lifted. Drawers emptied. Wall vents unscrewed. Book spines opened. Toothpaste tubes squeezed.
They flipped belongings, opened sealed mail, went through art supplies, and even confiscated a homemade chessboard that looked “suspicious.”
At the same time, the Nursing Director ordered full urine drug screens for every patient in the building. Over 90 people. Lined up like livestock. Guarded by corrections with latex gloves and clipboards.
Some patients panicked. Others ranted about rights. Some refused, and were forcibly held down.
The rumor was that someone had gone out on a pass, brought back psilocybin mushrooms, and shared them in crushed-up form baked into banana muffins. No one admitted anything. The muffins were long gone.
The results?
Not a single positive for mushrooms.
Not one.
And nothing was found in the searches.
But the damage had been done.
The Lawsuit
It started with one patient—Dev Patel, formerly a law student before his schizophrenia diagnosis. He had watched corrections throw his legal notes in the trash, rip his family photos, and confiscate his Bible for “testing.”
He called his lawyer.
Other patients followed. Word spread from unit to unit. They shared stories:
- Missing letters from children.
- Strip searches with no cause.
- Medication refusals because of the chaos.
- Emotional trauma from being treated like criminals instead of patients.
By the time the lawyer filed, it was a full class action suit against the hospital and the province:
“Unlawful search and violation of patient rights in a forensic psychiatric facility.”
The Outcome
It took eighteen months in court.
The hospital argued safety. The lawyers argued constitutional rights.
The judge ruled in favor of the patients.
“The state cannot suspend dignity under the pretense of suspicion, nor impose collective punishment on the mentally ill in locked care.”
Each participating patient was awarded $3,200 in damages. Some got more for documented abuse. One man used his money to buy guitar equipment. Another wrote a zine called The Mushroom Trials and mailed it to every forensic unit in the province.
The Nursing Director resigned quietly six weeks later. Corrections implemented new protocols. And urine screens? Now only ordered with cause.
The kicker?
To this day, no one ever figured out who actually brought the mushrooms in.
Some say it was a staff member.
Some say it was never real to begin with.
And some—like Dev—just smile and say:
“Maybe the mushroom brought itself.”
Chaper 11 – “The Fire in His Hands”
His name was Malcolm Renn.
Forty-one. Tall, pale, and twitchy—he spoke in bursts like he was trying to hold in a storm. Malcolm had set eight fires in three years. Houses, sheds, a community centre. No one had died, but two people were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. The news labeled him “The Spark Street Arsonist.”
He never denied it.
“I don’t know why I do it,” he told the court.
“But when I smell gasoline, my head goes quiet.”
The psychiatrists diagnosed pyromania with psychotic features. Hallucinations, compulsions, childhood trauma, and a longstanding belief that he could “talk to fire.” The judge ruled him Not Criminally Responsible, and he was sent to a secure forensic hospital for treatment.
At first, Malcolm was a nightmare.
He set his mattress on fire within the first week. Used a battery and a bit of steel wool stolen from an arts cart. The sprinkler system kicked in, flooding half the ward. After that, staff stripped his room and placed him on Level 1 precautions—no books, no pens, no lighters within fifty feet.
But over time, he calmed.
Medicated. Stabilized. Compliant.
He took part in fire safety education—ironically. Started journaling. Began making origami instead of matches.
One therapist wrote:
“Malcolm is showing insight into his condition and appears remorseful.”
Another wrote:
“He is engaging in meaningful reflection and appears to be managing compulsions effectively.”
The staff dropped his risk level. Eventually, he was given a small desk in his room and monitored art supplies. They let him sketch. Read. Write.
Until one night, at 2:12 a.m., his smoke detector went off.
Corrections ran in to find the corner of his desk blackened and smoldering, and Malcolm sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching.
He didn’t panic. He didn’t try to hide it.
He simply said:
“It got too loud in my head. I needed quiet.”
Privileges revoked.
Desk removed.
Fire safety meeting held.
But no one was hurt. He’d stomped it out himself. And six months later, with steady progress and no further incidents, Malcolm was once again seen as “manageable.”
A new team came in. Fresh eyes. New psychiatrist.
They said he had earned the opportunity to reintegrate.
“Supervised pass, two hours, local area only.”
He left at noon on a Saturday.
He never came back.
By 6 p.m., police scanners were alive with reports from the east side of the city: a single-story home fully engulfed in flames. Family was out shopping. Neighbors saw a man with a hood and gloves dousing the porch with gasoline. He lit a single match and watched it catch before vanishing.
The description matched Malcolm.
He was arrested the next morning, barefoot in a motel room two blocks away, mumbling something about “the fire gods needing to breathe again.”
Aftermath
The forensic hospital faced a massive internal review.
Staff were questioned. Files were audited. Public outrage followed.
“You gave an arsonist unsupervised access to the community?”
“He had already relapsed inside—why was he ever cleared for passes?”
“Are these doctors accountable to anyone?”
Malcolm was transferred to high-security permanent care. No more passes. No access to items that could burn. Concrete walls, empty room. He now drew in his head only, blinking to the rhythm of flames that only he could see.
One nurse asked him why he did it.
He answered:
“I never stopped being what I am. You just stopped believing I was.”
Chapter 12 – “The Blueprint”
His name was Darryl Knox.
Thirty years old. Clean fade. Cold eyes. Every movement deliberate, as if he’d already rehearsed the moment a hundred times. He grew up in public housing, bounced between foster homes, and by fifteen he’d already stabbed someone over a pair of sneakers.
But the charge that brought him to forensics was the murder of his own brother.
Not a fight. Not an accident.
Execution.
He said his brother “disrespected the bloodline” by cooperating with police during a drug investigation. At trial, Darryl claimed his brother was “in league with the devil.” Said he saw worms crawling in his face. Said God told him to “cut the snake’s head off.”
Psychiatrist reports said he was delusional, paranoid, possibly schizophrenic, and actively psychotic at the time of the killing.
The judge ruled him Not Criminally Responsible by reason of mental disorder, and he was shipped to the forensic hospital with a thick file and the label high-risk violent offender stamped in red.
At first, Darryl was volatile.
Refused medication. Threatened staff. Drew gang symbols in feces on the wall. He spent his first year bouncing between seclusion, mechanical restraints, and code whites.
Then, one day, he changed.
Started taking meds. Got clean-shaven. Read books. Spoke quietly. Made eye contact.
Staff were cautiously optimistic. The new psychiatrist believed he had “turned a corner.”
What they didn’t know was that Darryl wasn’t calming down—he was planning.
He started writing letters. Pages and pages of notes about “organizational hierarchy,” “movement control,” and “urban command structure.” He called it The Knox Syndicate. Said it would be a multi-city operation, dealing drugs, running scams, and using “strategic loyalty” to control weak minds.
He recruited younger patients in group therapy. Slipped notes under doors. Made promises:
“When I get out, I’m building something. You want in or out?”
Some laughed him off. Others nodded.
He told a staff member he wanted to start a “business.”
He called it a “social survival network.”
He started requesting visits from former street contacts—cousins, ex-girlfriends, a guy who used to run dice games in his building.
Security got suspicious. Monitored his calls. Flagged him. But nothing concrete stuck. Darryl was too careful.
By year five, he was on limited passes. Escorted walks. Then solo walks. Then weekend visits. He played it straight—never late, never loud, never high. His chart said:
“Demonstrates insight. Compliant with treatment. Mild risk of relapse under pressure.”
But behind closed doors, he was drawing maps of neighborhoods. He even made a vision board with cutouts from magazines—guns, cars, wads of cash, the word LOYALTY in gold block letters.
When one of the nurses asked him if he had regrets, Darryl stared through her and said:
“I didn’t kill my brother. I removed a problem.”
The psychiatrist wrote it off as “lingering thought distortion.”
The review board gave him a discharge plan.
And Then He Was Gone
Out on conditional release. Into a halfway house. Within two months, he stopped showing up for appointments.
Rumors started circling. A small crew in Scarborough calling themselves “The Syndicate.” Seen wearing red pins. Whispers of intimidation. A gas station robbed. A witness too scared to testify.
The hospital reported him in breach of conditions, but by then he had vanished.
No calls. No address. No fingerprints.
Some say he’s running an empire.
Others say he was killed by rivals before it got off the ground.
But his old roommate in the hospital still keeps one of his drawings—a throne, surrounded by fire, with the words:
“I Am The System Now.”
Chapter 13 – The Illusion of Rehabilitation: Why Liberty Passes and Conditional Discharges Endanger the Public
The stories presented here are fictionalized composites, but they draw from deeply realistic, documented patterns within forensic psychiatric hospitals. Each narrative reveals a critical fracture in the system: a failure to reconcile the ideal of therapeutic recovery with the unpredictable, sometimes dangerous nature of human behavior under psychiatric constraint.
At the center of these failures lies a single, recurring mechanism: the liberty pass and its long-term cousin, the conditional discharge.
These policies are intended to balance patient rights with community safety. In theory, they give stabilized individuals a structured path back into society, guided by treatment teams, risk assessments, and legal oversight. But in practice, they often prioritize bureaucratic optimism over historical reality.
Let’s examine how:
1. Manipulation of the System is Commonplace
In the story of Jermaine—who smuggled cocaine back to the unit multiple times—staff repeatedly suspended his passes, only to reinstate them after brief periods of good behavior. He knew what the system wanted to see: compliance, surface-level remorse, and group attendance. Once his passes were reinstated, he returned to dealing drugs inside a supposedly secure institution.
This isn’t fiction—it reflects a known truth in forensic care: many patients learn to speak the language of progress without undergoing the internal transformation that risk assessments assume. When liberty passes are granted based on short-term behavior instead of long-term pattern recognition, public exposure to violence and criminality becomes not just possible—but predictable.
2. Forensic Patients Sometimes Use Passes to Reoffend
Consider Malcolm, the arsonist who once set fire to his desk inside the hospital. Despite a known compulsion to light fires—despite a prior attempt within hospital walls—he was eventually granted community access. Within hours, he disappeared and lit another house on fire, proving beyond any doubt that his core pathology had not been neutralized, only contained.
Similarly, the patient who murdered his brother and then plotted to become a gangster once released highlights another dangerous reality: delusional or antisocial ideologies can persist under the radar, even while patients perform “rehabilitation” for staff.
3. Passes Are Often Granted Despite Unresolved Risk
The story of the mushroom panic shows how uncertainty alone can lead to sweeping, rights-violating responses. The institution’s blind reaction was excessive and traumatizing—but it also exposes how fragile the risk framework truly is. If one patient brings contraband back from a pass, the entire hospital becomes a target of suspicion.
This fragility leads to institutional overcorrection after damage is already done. Rather than preventing the incident through thorough risk vetting, staff respond after the fact with mass urine tests, lockdowns, and trauma to innocent patients—a clear sign that passes are often granted without meaningful assurance of safety.
4. Conditional Discharges Offer a False Sense of Closure
Nathan Bell, the murderer who vanished after being allowed international travel, is a glaring example of institutional hubris. He passed every check. He smiled. He gave moving speeches about forgiveness and recovery. Then he walked out and never returned, leaving the public, and the hospital’s credibility, in flames.
This is a chilling reminder that conditional discharge is not a clean endpoint—it’s a risk event in itself. Without rigorous community monitoring, without fail-safe retrieval protocols, patients who are dangerous but convincing can disappear into society and resume their behavior unimpeded.
5. When Violence Happens Again, It’s Too Late
Perhaps the most disturbing examples are those involving violence on return from pass: the patient who smoked crack and beat another patient unconscious, or the man who raped a deaf inmate after being allowed social privileges. These acts don’t just harm victims—they shatter trust in the institution.
Every act of violence that follows a liberty pass damages the perception of mental health care, and undermines legitimate patient advocacy. It puts staff, patients, and the public in harm’s way, and it turns psychiatric recovery into a gamble instead of a plan.
Chapter 14 – No More Chances: Why Liberty Passes and Conditional Discharges Must Be Banned for Murderers, Sex Offenders, and Serial Arsonists
Forensic psychiatric hospitals operate under a paradox: they exist to treat the mentally ill, not to punish—but they also house individuals who have committed acts of extreme, irreversible harm.
Among these patients are murderers, sex offenders, and serial arsonists—individuals whose actions shattered lives, families, and communities. And yet, even these patients are often granted liberty passes and conditional discharges, on the belief that treatment equals rehabilitation, and rehabilitation equals reintegration.
This is not just misguided. It is dangerous, and it must stop.
Murderers: The Risk Is Permanent
A person who kills—especially a family member, a child, or a random victim—is someone who has demonstrated the ultimate disregard for life. Whether that act was driven by psychosis, delusion, or mania does not erase its permanence. The victim does not come back. The family does not heal with time.
And yet, forensic review boards routinely approve community passes for individuals who, by all accounts, committed calculated, brutal killings—so long as they can appear stable for a stretch of time. Sometimes that means one year. Sometimes two. That is not healing. That is risk management gambling with human lives.
The patient who murdered his brother, then plotted to start a criminal empire on the outside, is not an outlier. His manipulation of the system mirrors countless real-world examples where dangerous offenders perform compliance, earn staff trust, and use it as a tool to get free and reoffend.
There is no justification for giving any murderer even a partial re-entry into society. The right to liberty was forfeited the day a life was taken.
Sex Offenders: The Risk is Cyclical and Devastating
Sexual offences—particularly against children or vulnerable adults—represent a category of crime with extreme psychological damage to victims and a high likelihood of repeat behavior, especially when that behavior is rooted in deeply ingrained compulsions, delusions, or paraphilias.
In forensic hospitals, sex offenders can often mask their pathology with “good behavior,” attend therapy groups without revealing their true thoughts, and portray compliance with sex offender treatment programs.
But as seen in the case of the deaf man who was raped by another patient, even inside a hospital—where rules are strict, cameras are everywhere, and staff are trained—horrific offences can still happen. And when that same category of offender is allowed into the community on pass or conditional discharge, the risk multiplies and the warning signs get harder to monitor.
One mistake is too many. One new victim is too much.
Passes and conditional release for sex offenders are a gamble society cannot afford.
Serial Arsonists: Fire Is Not a Mistake—It’s a Pattern
Serial arson is not spontaneous. It’s planned. It’s compulsive. It is, in many cases, an eroticized or psychologically soothing ritual—which is why treatment can suppress it, but rarely eliminate it entirely.
As shown in the case of Malcolm, the patient who had set multiple fires, then set his desk on fire inside the hospital, and later went off pass and lit another house on fire, this is not someone who’s simply misunderstood.
This is someone whose compulsion is violence, even if it comes without direct confrontation. Fire kills. Fire traumatizes. Fire sends entire families into poverty and grief. And yet, institutions keep handing out passes under the belief that time and medication equals rehabilitation.
It doesn’t.
For arsonists who have shown a pattern—more than one incident, especially targeting homes or public places—there should be no pathway to passes, no temporary freedom, no discharge consideration.
The System Must Set Boundaries—Permanently
Mental illness explains a lot. It explains why people behave in self-destructive, harmful, or irrational ways. It explains how someone can become detached from their moral compass.
But it does not erase consequences. It cannot undo trauma.
No amount of good behavior, group therapy, journal writing, or “treatment compliance” should ever override the fundamental duty to protect the public from individuals who have already demonstrated a catastrophic level of danger.
If a person:
- Has murdered another human being
- Has committed sexual violence
- Has intentionally set multiple fires with intent to cause harm or chaos
…they should be treated as patients, yes—but patients within the walls, not the streets.
Treatment can continue behind locked doors.
Medication can be delivered in secure rooms.
Hope can be offered without handing them the keys to the community.
Policy Recommendation: A Categorical Ban
We call for the immediate adoption of the following:
- A permanent ban on liberty passes and conditional discharges for all forensic patients found NCR for:
- First-degree or second-degree murder
- Sexual offences involving force, coercion, or minors
- Two or more verified arson incidents
- Annual independent reviews of forensic policy by external public safety officials, not just psychiatrists.
- Legally enforceable victim and family input, before any patient found NCR for a serious violent offence is considered for movement or discharge.
Closing Statement
Liberty passes are not human rights—they are institutional privileges that must be earned only when the risk is low and the offense is minor.
For murderers, rapists, and serial arsonists, the line must be drawn.
Not out of vengeance, but out of duty.
Let treatment continue—but let it continue behind the glass, where the public does not have to pay the price again.
The Blind Spot: Doctors Can’t See Inside People’s Heads
One of the most dangerous assumptions in forensic psychiatry is that progress is visible.
Psychiatrists and treatment teams assess a patient’s “readiness” for passes, privileges, or discharge using tools like interviews, mood observations, medication compliance, and group participation. But here’s the critical truth that too often goes unspoken:
Doctors cannot see inside people’s minds.
They can read behavior. They can listen to speech. They can observe eye contact, posture, and patterns of thought—but they cannot access the truth of a patient’s intent, fantasy, or deception. And in forensic hospitals—where many patients have committed violent, manipulative, or predatory acts—intent matters more than anything else.
Testimony Is the Currency of Freedom
In this system, the patient’s words become their most valuable weapon.
They quickly learn the scripts:
- “I’ve gained insight into my past actions.”
- “I understand my triggers now.”
- “I’ve accepted responsibility and I want to grow.”
- “I use my coping tools daily.”
- “I no longer have thoughts of harming anyone.”
These phrases unlock access to outings, privileges, and eventually, the community itself.
But in many cases, these statements are performed, not lived.
The patients know what to say, when to say it, and which staff members to say it to. They compare notes. They practice. They figure out which therapists are the soft ones, which doctors believe in redemption stories, and which phrases get written down in glowing terms in the next review.
They’re not being honest—they’re playing the part.
And the system rewards it.
The Drug and Alcohol Pipeline
For many patients, the goal of getting a pass isn’t to see family or build life skills—it’s to access drugs, alcohol, and their former lifestyle, even if that lifestyle nearly killed them or others.
They use passes to:
- Reconnect with dealers
- Score pills, booze, or harder substances
- Engage in high-risk sex or violence
- Bring contraband back into the hospital
- Escape entirely
They do it not because they’re evil—but because addiction and antisocial behavior don’t vanish with a diagnosis or a journal entry.
And doctors, relying on what they see in short sessions or what’s written in a group report, often don’t catch it until it’s too late—until someone overdoses, goes missing, or gets hurt.
Psychiatric Deception is a Learned Skill
Inside forensic hospitals, manipulation isn’t rare—it’s routine.
Patients trade tips on how to lie to the psychiatrist.
They mock therapy in private while nodding politely in session.
They simulate emotion. They suppress their real beliefs.
They become experts at shaping a version of themselves that clinicians will sign off on.
And unless staff are highly trained, trauma-informed, and ruthlessly honest with themselves, they get fooled.
When Testimony Outweighs History, the Public Pays
A man who once murdered, raped, or lit buildings on fire can sit calmly in an office and say all the right things—and if those words are taken at face value, without accounting for the possibility of strategic lying, then the system becomes vulnerable to the very minds it’s trying to treat.
And when that mind lies well enough to earn freedom—someone else out there may pay the price.
Safety First: Why Community Protection Must Come Before the Well-being of Murderers, Sex Offenders, and Serial Arsonists
There is a growing trend within forensic psychiatry and mental health policy to prioritize the recovery and well-being of even the most dangerous individuals—those who have taken lives, violated bodies, or set buildings ablaze in compulsive cycles.
They are patients, yes. But they are also offenders of the highest order. Their histories are not mistakes—they are catastrophic events that forever altered the lives of victims and families. They are not simply struggling with distress; they are individuals who have demonstrated lethal capacity.
And yet, in many jurisdictions and institutions, the system bends over backward to ensure that their mental health is protected—even if it endangers everyone else.
This is unacceptable.
The System Must Serve the Public, Not Rehabilitate at Any Cost
The goal of forensic psychiatry is not just to heal—it is to contain, to evaluate, and to protect the public from high-risk individuals whose minds and behaviors have proven to be violently dangerous.
When institutions focus more on a murderer’s “right to social reintegration” than a nurse’s right to go home uninjured, the system is broken.
When a repeat arsonist, known to set fire to homes, is given a pass based on “good behavior” and burns down another house—that’s not just a failure in clinical judgment. That’s an abandonment of the community’s right to safety.
When a sex offender with a known pattern of predatory behavior is allowed into unstructured public spaces because he showed “insight” in therapy, that is not rehabilitation—that is gambling with innocence.
And when staff—the very people entrusted to care for and monitor these individuals—feel unsafe in their own workplace, being assaulted, threatened, manipulated, or traumatized by those they’re ordered to supervise, we must ask:
Whose well-being is this system really serving?
Compassion Has Limits—And Those Limits Begin With Safety
It is compassionate to treat mental illness. It is just to offer care over punishment where appropriate.
But there is no moral high ground in risking lives to extend trust to someone who has already destroyed it once—or many times—before.
- The mental health of a murderer is not more important than the physical safety of a single staff member.
- The emotional distress of a sex offender is not more important than the community’s right to feel secure in its parks, streets, and homes.
- The relapse risk of a serial arsonist should never be given more weight than the hundreds of lives they can endanger with one act.
There is no possible justification for elevating the internal state of a known, high-risk offender above the safety of the people around them.
Staff and Society Are Not Sacrifices for Psychiatric Idealism
Nurses are being punched, bitten, stalked, and threatened.
Security officers are being exposed to traumatizing scenes.
Social workers are forced to defend decisions that terrify them privately.
And members of the public—who never consented to be part of anyone’s treatment plan—are put at risk every time someone unstable is handed a pass or discharge on “clinical grounds.”
This is not treatment. This is sacrifice.
It sends the message that the worst people get the most protection, while the best people—those who serve, treat, and trust—get left bleeding, betrayed, or burned.
Conclusion: The Line Must Be Drawn
There must be a hard and permanent boundary in policy and practice:
The mental health and emotional wellness of murderers, sex offenders, and repeat arsonists can never be prioritized over the safety of staff and the community.
Let treatment continue—but let it be contained. Let healing happen—but let it happen under secure observation. Let humanity remain in the system—but not at the cost of other people’s lives.
Because no recovery is worth another life lost.
Mechanicism Official 