Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fzeroracer 2468 days ago
Think about this for a moment.

You prosecute someone that's mentally ill and send them to jail. Now the jail has to deal with violent outbursts and is generally not equipped to handle people on a medical level like that. Our prison system is designed to punish people, so those people if they get out of jail fall back into the same issues.

The answer to solve these problems is better preventative care. Meaning better healthcare for vulnerable populations, better solutions to housing for the homeless and so forth. Unfortunately solutions like this require things like increased taxes or recognizing the problem exists and many would prefer to just sweep it under the rug for people in emergency rooms and jails to deal with.
1 comments
creato 2468 days ago
Once someone commits a serious crime like battery, they need to either go to jail, or be involuntarily committed to some other kind of institution.
link
fzeroracer 2468 days ago
Except, again, that doesn't solve the problem. They go to jail for a year or two, become a handful for people in prison to handle (whom are not equipped to handle people with severe mental illness), are released and then the cycle continues. Or even then, those inmates are admitted to those same hospitals because where else do you think people get proper treatment?

None of this discussion solves the actual problem at hand, it just deals with the symptoms. Eventually the problem will become uncontrollable if you just ignore the actual damn reasons why people with said issues end up becoming homeless or violent in the first place.

link
closeparen 2468 days ago
When the symptoms include unacceptable impacts on other people, they still have to be dealt with.

We can and should chip away at risk factors, but the human brain is wickedly complex and we're never going to get 100% health and behavior within norms. Just like we can and should encourage exercise and healthy diets, but we're still going to need the medical system.

link
creato 2468 days ago
That sounds like a year or two where that person isn't battering ER personnel. Sounds like the problem was at least put on hold for a while to me.
link
AstralStorm 2468 days ago
Instead they person is battering inmates or police and getting punished for it, while potentially being recruited to criminal activity instead of being treated.

Truly a good solution. /s

link