Sure, my post was not expansive enough to account for criminals and the mentally ill. The bottom I referred to is for people without means, but with capacity to

Sure, my post was not expansive enough to account for criminals and the mentally ill. The bottom I referred to is for people without means, but with capacity to care for themselves. The hard part of that conversation is that we consider criminal offenses as the only grounds for forcibly incarcerating a person. Mentally ill people need policies that will better protect them fron themselves and their neighbors BEFORE they commit crimes and end up in prison. We likely need new models of mental institutions and new laws which allow people to be committed when it is in everyone’s best interest… yet somehow avoid the abuses and horrors of the past. A very hard problem indeed.