So I'm an advocate of bringing the asylums back - for humanitarian reasons. I'm not talking about restoring the way asylums were, with straitjackets and rooms with rubber walls, etc., but a more humane asylum where people can be treated or if necessary, held indefinitely in a place where they at least have food and shelter as well as a modicum of safety.
They way we (as a society) manage the homeless situation is far more cruel. Nobody should be allowed to live and sleep out on a city street. Working in Manhattan, I see a lot of these people and many of them absolutely should be committed to an institution.
There is one homeless person in particular who I see sleeping right on the sidewalk at Lexington Avenue near 43th Street across from Grand Central almost every morning. For months now. Even when it's near zero degrees, that guy is lying down on the street in rags and just socks on his feet. He stinks so badly that I have to hold my breath when I walk by. Usually there is an empty bottle of booze and fast food wrappers surrounding him. It's a disgrace that this is allowed to happen. That guy should have been picked up long ago and brought to a facility.
Not only do human beings have to monitor the surveillance technology, but there will always be cost considerations that leave some places in the facility without video coverage.
Staff members who are up to no good will soon find out where those are, and that's where the abuse will happen.
Also, the humans who monitor the video can be bribed, or they can become the instigators, because the watchers will have a lot of power over those they are watching.
This happens all the time in prison settings. There is lots of surveillance technology, but bad things still happen all the time.
I don't think there are enough high-character people to hire to staff institutions that have it as their mission to take care of people who (1) can't take care of themselves, and also (2) actively resist being taken care of by others. I'm afraid this is just an irreducible fact, at least for now.
Conceivably, robotic attendants might handle the problem someday, but it will be quite a while before that happens.
And that doesn't even touch on the problem of actual criminals who pretend to be insane, find a place within asylums that are intended for people who are really insane and helpless, and then proceed to abuse and exploit the helpless residents. It only takes one or two of those cases to taint the entire institution in the eyes of the activist media, that will turn such incidents into opportunities to advance the political agenda.