After an prisoner took a therapist hostage last year at a corrections psychiatric centre in Abbotsford, investigators tried to determine what could have set him off on such a violent rage.
Their conclusion: Pictionary.
"Prior to the incident ... prisoners were playing Pictionary," says the internal report, obtained by The Vancouver Sun. "[The prisoner] was one of the first persons to draw a picture; it was 'toilet paper.' The other participants laughed at his picture leading him to withdraw and become less communicative within the group."
According to the report, obtained under Access to Information legislation, the therapist noticed the prisoner was upset and tried to calm him down "by pointing out to him that everybody else in the group [was] laughing at most other persons' drawings."
The prisoner's mood seemed to improve at first. But after the game was finished, the prisoner walked into the therapist's office, locked the door behind him and tied a belt around her neck in the form of a noose. A negotiator was brought in to try to convince the prisoner -- whose name was deleted from the documents released to The Sun -- to release the therapist, but he told the negotiator to "back off or he [would] kill his hostage".
At that point, security staff stormed the office, freed the hostage and restrained the prisoner. The whole incident took just 10 minutes.
Following the hostage taking, the prisoner -- who was earlier classified as a medium-security risk -- was reclassified a maximum-security prisoner and relocated to another jail. The report says he faced new criminal charges in connection with the incident.
The Correctional Service of Canada launched an internal investigation into the incident, which took place on Jan. 18, 2002. The report was completed the following May, but only released to The Sun this week.
The Regional Treatment Centre in Abbotsford where the incident took place is a maximum-security facility that provides psychiatric care and treatment for sex offenders and violent offenders.
The exact nature of the hostage-taker's criminal record was deleted from the documents released to The Sun, but the report does note he is a sex offender.
The internal report found no flaws in staff's handling of the incident and praised the quick response of security staff.
Pictionary is a popular board game in which participants try to get teammates to guess a word or phrase by drawing pictures on a piece of paper.
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Pictionary. PICTIONARY.
You know what? I give up. Let's start a movement. Obviously, this goes beyond mere Pictionary. I've long felt that "Go fish" was the greatest problem we, as a people, face. After all, what could possibly be more damaging to society's moral fiber than being told that our 6 year old competitor does not, in fact, have any two's? Nothing, I say.
We must work quickly to remove anything even remotely connected to competition of any sort, as it breeds nothing but violence and death.
*sigh*[glow=darkred][/glow]
What fresh hell?
