Absolutely senseless and disgusting to see this Asian woman punched for no reason

[Orangeclad]

This should make EVERYBODY angry no matter what side of the aisle you're on when people cannot even innocently walk the streets of America without being the victim of absolutely senseless attacks. This guy had been arrested many times but he's still walking the streets. Why?

 

[BamaFan1137]

Why?

I can answer that one. LBJ deinstitutionalized the mentally ill calling the practice cruel. The "asylum's" were poorly funded and they were a disgrace...but closing them was a step in the wrong direction.

Now these people are intermittently housed in county jails and occasionally in prisons...where I'm certain the treatment is much more humane...when they aren't roaming the streets and sleeping outside.

County jails are profoundly unprepared to meet the needs of truly mentally ill people. They are warehoused, as best as they can be, while the officers do their best to keep them alive and specifically try to keep the other inmates from killing them. People who are mentally ill tend to irk sociopaths and sociopaths tend to flock to jails and prisons.

 

[BamaFan1137]

To answer your question more succinctly...people with mental disorders slip through the cracks by design. No one can handle them and no one has the funding to even if they wanted to. They are processed and pushed out as quickly as possible.

The state of Alabama has, by conservative estimates, a need for approximately 6,000 permanent beds for mentally ill patients. It has been a while since I looked but the last time I checked, we have 214 permanent beds for them.

There's about 1,000 short term beds (about 6 weeks) mostly funded by non-profits.