When you say incarceration do you mean prison and jails or recovery clinics? America (and Canada too!) had horrible issues with abuses in mental institutions t

When you say incarceration do you mean prison and jails or recovery clinics? America (and Canada too!) had horrible issues with abuses in mental institutions that led to a short sighted knee-jerk reaction of shuttering all of them to prevent abuses rather than cleaning them up and addressing the actual concerns. As someone with a family member with developmental disabilities (comorbid with other issues) I've seen my family member thrive in institutional settings - not getting locked in a padded cell institutions but facilities with enough staff and patients to respond quickly and with specialized labour to sudden issues. I think it'd be wonderful if we could, as a society, get our minds away from Victoria Era sanitoriums where patients were exhibited as carnival shows and start seriously investing in larger facilities - home care options and group homes fall extremely short in providing ample care for folks while being extremely costly. I don't think any of the people sleeping on the street are there by choice - it's just that their alternatives don't exist. A fair number of shelters are run by religious organizations that shame and preach to the homeless - offering a bed in exchange for prostelitization, other shelters are short on beds for the population they need to serve and prevent long term residency sometimes allowing a few consecutive nights - sometimes offering a single night, kicking everyone out in the morning and offering beds first come first served. Depending on how you are defining incarceration I'm either in agreement with you or I guess - yea, it'd work, but it's a terrible solution to just force people with mental illnesses into the prison system where they will receive next to no mental healthcare and just rot as human beings. Mental disabilities don't make you subhuman.