“That said, we are absolutely NOT dealing with mental health in this country. Hospitals don’t want them, cops don’t know what to do with them, and judges put them back out on the street as fast as they come in.”
Most notably starting with the activist movie “The Snake Pit” ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040806/ ) mental health treatment became a civil rights issue.
This was not entirely misplaced as people were frequently committed to mental institutions by powerful families like the Kennedy’s. Joe Kennedy had a lobotomy performed on his daughter Rosemary and latter day writers suspect this was to cover up sexual abuse on the part of Joe Kennedy.
The system was devoid of checks and balances and people could be imprisoned for life without charge, without ever seeing a courtroom, and then they could be experimented upon (lobotomies, electroshock, LSD, etc.) without consent.
The problem is that the pendulum swung so far that violent sexual predators are now being released when they should be confined.
The trick is to pull that pendulum back to a more rational place while ensuring that the civil rights of people detained in state custody are protected.
We also want to make sure no one is ever sent to an insane asylum simply for not being a liberal.