My state doesn't have money to put people mental health hospital beds more than five days max. It's a lot cheaper to put the crazies in prison (only $100,000 per year) but they have to commit a crime first.
If we want to shrink government, we gotta keep the nuts on the street.
I noticed you are from California. Arnie can find the money for state wide health insurance, even for illegals. The truly dangerous represent a small portion of people with mental illness, it’s not like the state would be paying for millions. I’m sure the money could be found, unfortunately we’ve been told that institutions are inhumane and violate the civil rights of the crazy people.
We don’t need to “keep the nuts on the street”. We need to cut the red tape and bleeding heart regulations, and make it a LOT cheaper to keep people locked up, whether they belong in a secure mental institution or a regular prison. Frankly, there’s no reason for people who’ve been committed to a mental institution with no real possibility of recovery sufficient to re-join society, to be receiving all sorts of expensive “treatment”. There’s no reason it should cost more than $20,000 a year to keep somebody in a secure institution, and medicated to whatever extent is necessary to make them easily manageable by staff.