3 prisoners die of thirst in a jail, consequences of living on a prison planet.

@Starcrossed There could be more resources spent to manage them though. Like better training for mental health care professionals and new institutions built. Prisons should be for offenders, not people who don't know where they are at so badly that their mind stops them from drinking water.

Ronald Reagan (not sure) I think ended mental institutions and for good reason, they were so abusive. For the record, many females got sent there because they asked for divorce and their husbands would stick them there. So not nice places at all.

But what happened was a political move, everyone was so hurried to end them that the president ended them to win points and what ended up happening was that they didn't replace them and jails became a cure all for everything. Which was a bad move.

@SatanBurger over half the country doesn't want to support such socialist policies to fund facilities for mentally ill, much less MI&D.

@Starcrossed that I can agree with. Putting everything in the same category isn't right nor is seperation of every issue. Crimes should be punished. Mental health issues vary so widely that you can't expect a judge to make a call on 'he/she was not in the right state of mind'. Hunger also affects mental health.

@Justafantasy there's also judicial orders "treat to competency" and some states have laws that committed patients that are associated with a crime need to be placed in a bed within so many hours and thus get placed with priority over others waiting weeks/months for an open bed. The mental health system is an absolute mess.

@Starcrossed reading a first person journalistic account of it in Canada. I really don't want to be part of something I could probably use

@SatanBurger uh my spouse is in the field in the THICK of this issue and I have a nuanced understanding of the hoops administrators have to go through to get someone placed. Oh and I couldn't be further from right wing. And I have family who are cops and completely agree, they have no business managing the mentally ill.

My point was only that the whole system very messed up and it's BECAUSE of politics.

But thanks for jumping to a whole bunch of conclusions about me.

I said over half the country because it's true, neither conservatives nor liberals are voting to throw money at this problem and its putting lots of people at risk; patients, mental care providers, prison staff, cops, EMTs, AND the public. People in the public have been murdered because neither a prison or mental health facilities are equipped to care for MID, so sometimes MIDs are simply discharged where they end up committing more assaults.

@Starcrossed Ah I see what you were saying now and I do apologize, I honestly feel bad. There's too many on here who want to play right wing buzz word bingo when you bring up some policies that don't involve stepping on homeless people for fun or throwing someone down the stairs. I am just used to those conversations so I felt like that's where you were going.

Furthermore, I don't get people... a right winger could approach me about the mental health care issue and propose something or a left winger could do the same, what I would do is take both in mind and if I was a politician, I would sit down and think hard about policies and other resources to make things right. I would probably take both ideas to see if I can meet in the middle and what is doable, what isn't. This sounds very logical to me.

I don't understand why people just want to simultaneously complain about an issue but when anything is proposed it gets fought against. What they're really saying is that they don't care deep down but I don't get how one can not care and then complain about crime like let's say conservatives do.

@Starcrossed I genuinely apologize, I don't expect you to forgive me but I know what you're saying now. I took it another way.