Maggie's Farm

So it will be difficult to administer fairly and judiciously and it will be or will become very expensive. Those of us who remember the days when the insane were locked up and we were not are of the opinion that those problems with the re-institution of widespread detention of the dangerously insane are an acceptable alternative to what we have. What might that be, you ask? Sandy Hook, Rep Gifford, that mess in Norway, the Navy Yard killings ... do I need to continue? I think not.

I don't know what state you're from, but state laws set the essential framework for mental health commitments. In Texas, an involuntary commitment requires - if the respondent aka the supposed mentally ill person demands it - a trial by jury of that issue of fact. Just as in other trials, the judge instructs the jury on what the law is that applies to the case and, at least in Texas, juries are not afraid to exercise what amounts to jury nullification and find for a respondent where the facts justify it. How do I know, you ask? Glad you asked. I was a court reporter in country courts-at-law and district courts here in Texas and practiced law for a total of over 35 years. About 25% of my work was defending indigent folks whose involuntary commitment was being sought either by the State of Texas or by their greedy children. You might be surprised by what a jury of folks who believe that they are actually in charge of the verdict will do to protect what they see as a person being railroaded. The use of a complete jury trial methodology will tend to produce - not assure; no assurances in the world I live in; don't know about you - tend to produce fair and just verdicts.

And I think that disposes of most of your objections based on "folks we don't agree with get locked up". As far as the rest, look up the meaning of the word, "asylum" - it refers to a place of safety for the people within it, safety from a world they are unable to deal with and in some cases unable to even comprehend. Why were they called that? Because before their introduction, the typical reaction to the insane by everyday people was to try to kill the insane because they were quite frightening. And they still are quite frightening, but they are in part isolated by intention and by untended consequences of police practices to specific areas of the towns and cities where they live, so all the "good" people and the "important" people don't see them much. The insane are still preyed upon by the ignorant and fearful; to that we add the ignorant and politically connected these days.

There are organizational and legal structures to reduce the "potato bin" consequences of asylums, we need to have them in the laws and have them enforced. Just like all the laws. This era, however, is one where the law is ignored by many when it is inconvenient or inconsistent with some idiotic ideology or another.

Well, that's my rejoinder. Due process by statue as in Texas with extra protections once detained and enough of a budget and small enough facilities so that detainee abuse - think of granny in the old folks home - is kept to a minimum. Groups of concerned citizens outside of the system who work to watchdog these places and their practices would work wonders, too.

Sorry, J.T., but mental health commitments are entirely within the state authority not the Federal. Forgive me that I don't have the citation right at hand, but it's true. Regulations do not overrule statutory law. Once the state passes civil commitment laws, the regulatory apparatus is out of the picture. The problem is to get any given state to pass a statute that provides protections from involuntary commitment.

Check your dictionary, as to the definition of the word, "asylum". It is certainly true that the historical classic asylums were hell holes. That doesn't require than any institutions we create now have to be the same. Nor do I think they are rosy places with bunnies and unicorns abounding. Careful oversight and requiring staff be screened for their own minor quirks and regular inspections from the legislature can reduce that sort of thing. There are not "countless people" being sentenced to mental hospitals instead of prisons; there are a relatively small number of such commitments, compared to the number of trials for major criminal offenses and as an absolute number it may appear large, but in a nation of over 320 million, it needs to be more than 2% I would think; otherwise using "countless" is simply rhetoric.

I seem to hear an undercurrent in your posts of a desire for a perfect solution to the problem. There is not any such thing to be found, but we can improve public safety as well as the lives of the many unfortunates who are compelled to live on the streets in a world in which they are incompetent to function. What I propose is to reduce the suffering all around, not to end the suffering. Ending it is a chimera, impossible to attain. In this instance, the perfect is the enemy of the good. We can make improvements and with careful and diligent supervision arrive at institutions for the insane which are well run and staffed by mostly compassionate folks. We cannot produce an institutional setting which is entirely free of abuse and mistreatment and even misdiagnosis, no more than we can create a judicial setting in which truth and justice always prevail. We are human and prone to error. That said, the nightmare you forsee is not a necessary result of the recreation of institutions to house those suffering from violent insanity or those who refuse to take their medications thereby putting the rest of us at risk of injury - directly or indirectly - from their inability to function in the real world.

We cannot abandon the search and effort to create a society which is as good as we can make it at this time, just because once there was the reality (which I freely acknowledge) illustrated by the Soviet misuse of psychiatric detentions as well as the horrors of the early years of institutional care for the insane. Why? Because the institutions don't have to be that way, nor do they have to become that way. The most horrible outcome imaginable will occur, if we abandon the method of applying intelligence and good will to the tasks we face as a society and as a nation.