Since the deinstitutionalization movement in the last quarter of the twentieth century, those with serious mental illness have flooded our under-equipped-for-mental-health-prison-systems and/or our urban homeless populations, while previously, they were many times held in asylums. Prisons are incapable of giving proper psychiatric treatment to inmates, and this creates a liability issue for the sicky, staff, and other inmates. Oftentimes, when they end up homeless, if they are getting treatment, it is from underfunded outpatient facilities with poor compliance. Other times, they just end up on the street, which isn’t good for them or anyone. Further, the defunded police are definitely not the best people to deal with these individuals, and suggestions of a social worker fleet is silly. Hospital psych wards are not allowed to keep people for too long and nursing homes are already stuffed. 

So should the United States return to a public and federally funded asylum system or do you think the prison system, outpatient clinics, and the streets are adequate for treatment of the mentally ill? Also, what can we call it instead of asylum because people don’t like lobotomies and liberally given ECT? ZZZAPPP

I have left much of this hot take with many blanks to fill in so enjoy and remember to vote blue, but fund the police and bring back cash bail because you shouldn’t do crimes at all so if you can’t afford it that’s your problem no matter your background. Crime is a sick bird, an ill eagle.