When the Law Feels Misaligned: NCRMD and the Reality of Harm

Jun 07, 2026·By Cori McGuire

Recent decisions involving individuals found Not Criminally Responsible (NCRMD) have generated significant public concern, particularly in cases involving extreme violence.

Allan Schoenborn killed his three children in 2008 in the context of a family law separation and was later found Not Criminally Responsible due to psychosis. He has now been granted a conditional discharge. The children’s mother survived for 11 years until 2019. The law records the outcome of the case, but it does not capture the lived reality of those who lost members of that family.

In a separate and widely known case, Vince Li killed a 22‑year‑old stranger, Tim McLean, in a completely unprovoked attack on a Greyhound bus, later decapitating and cannibalizing him. He too was found Not Criminally Responsible and ultimately received an absolute discharge. Tim McLean’s mother has spoken publicly about the grief she continues to carry—grief that does not diminish with legal outcomes and does not resolve with time.

These reactions are not isolated. They reflect a broader truth that anyone who has lived through profound trauma and harm understands instinctively: the effects do not disappear and the legal system can exacerbate them. The effects do not become smaller with time. Some days are more manageable than others, but the loss remains, and it reshapes the lives of those left behind in ways the law does not acknowledge or care to measure.

It is important to be clear: these outcomes are not aberrations. They reflect the NCRMD framework functioning as intended. Once a person is found not criminally responsible, the legal system is no longer concerned with punishment. The Review Board process is governed by a single question—whether the individual poses a current significant threat to public safety. If that threshold is not met, the law requires progression toward discharge.

This creates a fundamental tension between legal reasoning and lived experience. The law is structured around current risk. Harm, as it is experienced by victims and families, is not time‑limited. It is enduring. When the system moves forward without reference to that reality, it can feel as though the past—and its impact—has been set aside.

This tension is not new, and it is not abstract. My early academic work examined the NCRMD defence through a feminist lens, alongside studies in sociology, criminology, and later graduate work in Holocaust studies. Across those disciplines, a consistent pattern emerges: systems designed to impose order often struggle to fully account for the lived experience of harm.

The NCRMD framework serves an important function in addressing mental illness. At the same time, it reflects a clinical model that can sit uneasily alongside the full moral weight of what has occurred. The language of treatment, risk, and reintegration does not always capture the depth of harm as it is actually lived.

History offers few simple resolutions. Individuals who have endured profound injustice—Holocaust survivors, Nelson Mandela, and others—did not reconcile their experiences by concluding that systems are complete or just. Viktor Frankl articulated this directly: we cannot control what happens, but we can determine how we respond.

For those working within the law, this raises difficult but necessary questions. How do we continue to engage with a framework that is legally coherent, yet experienced by many as incomplete? How do we hold both an understanding of the system and a clear view of its limitations? How do we respond without compounding trauma, while supporting people in moving beyond being defined by it?

My own career has increasingly explored these questions. While litigation remains necessary in some cases, my work has focused on stepping away from adversarial frameworks wherever possible and moving toward approaches informed by neuroscience and trauma‑informed practice—aimed at resolving conflict in ways that better reflect how people actually experience harm.

That shift is not without risk. It involves uncertainty, changes in income, and a willingness to move outside established models of practice. It also requires confronting uncomfortable questions about what works, what does not, and what needs to change. Those decisions are not made abstractly—they are shaped by what we see, repeatedly, in the lives of the people we work with.

Reform in this area will not come from legislation alone. It requires alignment in how we understand harm, responsibility, and resolution—within our practices, our institutions, and our own decision-making. That process is gradual, imperfect, and ongoing. But it is work that increasingly feels necessary.

There are no simple answers. But there is value in naming the tension clearly, and in continuing to move toward approaches that better reflect the realities we are trying to address.

Written by Cori L. McGuire, a family law mediator, arbitrator, collaborative family law lawyer and Parenting Coordinator with a family law practice in British Columbia since 1998.