Dr. Jeroen Ensink, 41, a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was stabbed to death by Nigerian-born student Femi Nandap, who was a cannabis-abusing psychotic (in the strict, clinical sense):
Despite attacking a police officer in May last year and then being caught in possession of two kitchen knives, Nandap was twice given bail, before prosecutors decided to drop the charges against him.
Six days later he attacked and killed Dr Ensink, telling police who tried to intervene that he was the “black messiah”.
The current academic wisdom is that it would be impossible to prevent such murders without restricting large numbers of patients — say 35,000 of them:
Taking the very paper which provides the “35,000” figure for stranger murder, the figures for assault are shown below, and put things into a more manageable context. The annual rates for assault and violent crime are extraordinarily high, almost unbelievably so. Given the very high base rate, screening and monitoring are worth while.
As the event becomes more rare, the positive predictive value of the risk-categorization becomes lower, and the error rate higher, with progressively more people needing to be monitored to prevent one rare event. However, to prevent an assault would require that 3 schizophrenic patients be monitored, calling them in to check they are taking their medication, and presumably (hardest part) searching for them if they failed to show up. Easier would be to link up with the Police, so that if a patient is brought in for violent behaviour of any sort there can be coordinated management of the offender. Devoutly to be wished, often denied, but in the manageable range given the will and the resources. It would provide a good service for the patients, reducing suicide attempts, improving the quality of their lives, and reducing threats to others. It would certainly be worth testing it out in a London Borough, and checking that the above figures, derived from the best sources, hold up on further examination.
None of the media coverage goes into the question which arises out of normal curiosity: is psychotic behaviour more common among Africans in the UK? The picture above shows murderer and victim, and is an all too common pairing. The answer to the African question is: 6 to 9 times higher.