Well, I wish you would add more. You'd surely have more of value and experience to say than almost anybody here. But I hope that doesn't sound demanding--I really appreciate your comment.
I'd be happy to say more, but probably the most important thing people can do is read the article. Lack of adequate services for the mentally ill is a huge issue. In the absence of services, they often end up behaving oddly enough for someone to call the police, leading to arrest. More and more often we see families who are relieved that their loved ones are arrested just to get access to treatment.
That seems like a real shame, and often their needs are a bad fit for the correctional system. I work in a forensic hospital, and most of our patients come from jails. They often do not get very good care there. Private hospitals are largely closing their psychiatric units, because they don't make money. More and more, state or county funded hospitals and clinics are the last stop, and those (as mentioned in the article) are popular targets for defunding when the budget gets rough. It's a bad situation.
At any rate, I'll check in again in the morning if anyone else has more questions.
My aunt is in that situation. She is severely mentally ill and homeless. She was in a shelter until a few months ago, no one has heard from her since. No one else in the family can afford to get her treatment, and she wouldn't comply even if we tried - she doesn't know she's mentally ill, she thinks her delusions are reality. We would all be relieved if she landed in jail as long as it came with some treatment. She is very intelligent, though, and she is not using drugs or alcohol, so she may never get herself in enough trouble to land in jail.
Committing people to treatment against their will sounds like a bad idea just begging for abuse, but what else can we do? In what world could she actually be taken care of? I don't know the answer.
Involuntary commitment is the reality for many people. Sometimes the delusions recede enough that they recognize they are ill.
I would encourage you to look for a support group for family members. Sometimes it helps to know other people are struggling with the same issues, and see how they cope with those issues when there's not a solution.
The article implies that it's more than 5x as expensive to house the mentally ill in jail than elsewhere. Such a huge difference suggests that providing them with housing and care would more than pay for itself, so cost ought not to be an issue. I realize that's oversimplifying--for one thing, total cost to society is not the same as costs (and income!) to different institutions--but do you think it's basically correct? If so, where in your view are the obstacles really coming from: moral ideas about criminality and illness? institutional politics? for-profit industry? etc.
I know it's so hard, even in the UK people get upset 'Why does this inner city youth club get X benefit' 'Why are we sending X troubled child to X holiday camp for the summer'
'Why doesn't my child get these things?' is often the question, but the answer that these things are put in place to try and reduce future potential crime and other societal damage are not things that a lot of people want to consider - I'm spending money now to negate possible risk in the future?
I can't find the report now, but there was an interesting experiment in London. In the UK the average homeless person costs the state around £26,000 (http://homeless.org.uk/costs-homelessness#.UgTa1Y3qlNQ) or even more in London.
A charity was able to get £5000 per homeless person from a corporate donation, and offered this money directly to 100 homeless people, with the only previsions being that they did not get to handle the cash directly and that everything they spent money on helping them get off the street.
Obviously this was a self selecting group (people that wanted to leave rough sleeping), but the following year a stunning proportion of those who had taken part had been able to turn their lives around.
Should there be a buffer to help people turn their lives around and stop them costing the state money? I'm all for it, but I have no idea how we could stop abuse of the system. We could start by trialling the idea out though, with money saved by stopping people and companies avoiding paying their taxes (some £16billion lost each year in the UK: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/500000Final.pdf )
