“If you were dictator, what would be your criterion for locking someone up without due processto who didn’t commit a crime?”
Oh, why would you assume there will be no due process? Is due process only after somebody kills? If a little monster starts exhibiting murderous tendencies, he or should needs to be properly handled and quarantined from the public. For adults, if you have history of certain mental illness (medically diagnosed), you are due for a lock up!
Who decides? The shrink? You realize this is the same type of policy Hitler and Stalin were able to use to consolidate power.
“little monster starts exhibiting murderous tendencies”
When I was a boy, we used to go out in the woods and shoot squirrels and birds with BB guns. A nutty parent and liberal shrink could could conclude that is a murderous tendency. It is a very slippery slope. I’d rather roll the dice that I won’t be a one and a billion victim of a mass shooting than give someone the power to lock me up because I could potentially commit a crime one day.
Try getting a child (under age 17) “committed” if he has shown no evidence of wanting to harm himself or others
No evidence from this long sad story that Adam Lanza was ever suicidal or violent.
Getting him “committed” to a private contained institution probably not in her insurance and you just think $240K a year alimony is enough. Costs of mental commitment probably range from $1500-$2000 per day (do the math). Ten years ago when we went through this costs were $1000 a day, max committment was 3 days for evaluation of the above, cash upfront please
The fact is, mental health “commitment” is for the uber rich or for the wards of the state (usually after they have acted out violently), not for the middle class
Sadly if Adam Lanza had lived, only now would he be getting the mental health commitment he needed- at taxpayer expense, like John Hinckley after he shot Reagan, like James Holmes only after Aurora, like Jared Loughner only after his rampage in Arizona
and for “adults” like Adam Lanza after his 18th birthday:
Try getting anyone over age 18 “committed” if
1) you cannot document to a judge and and insurance company the answer “YES” to the question “Are they a grave danger to themselves and/or others”
and
2) If they do NOT want to cooperate in being “committed”
Yeah we can all judge the mistakes Nancy Lanza made, until we live for almost 20 years in her situation with a mental health and educational and social system that absolutely offers no answers...unless you get lucky or are rich enough to just send your “weird” child away and lock them up to keep them safe and give yourself guilt, but some freedom,