In a former job, I was confronted with a heartbreaking string of cases of individuals who are homeless, clearly suffering from mental illness, yet repeatedly br

In a former job, I was confronted with a heartbreaking string of cases of individuals who are homeless, clearly suffering from mental illness, yet repeatedly breaking into local businesses, often not to steal anything of value. The frustrating choice for those in the prosecutorial or defense systems, is how to best perform your duty to the public and these individuals. If you simply release them, the business owners continue to face victimization. If you send them to jail, you put them in a completely inappropriate community, and damn them to poor or nonexistent care for complex problems. It's not isolated cases, mental health issues took up a significant portion of our resources in the criminal justice system (a system that, when overburdened, suffers both Type I and Type II errors simultaneously, leading to higher rates of hasty convictions while also letting more guilty individuals walk free). The best solution I heard, discussed only in chambers with heavy sighs as to its political infeasibility, was some sort of mental health court, analogous to a drug court. Drug courts are designed to take a significant number of cases and prosecute them more efficiently, while focusing on what reduces recidivism most, and helps those "offenders" (treatment and monitoring is the general template, though individual cases can be highly customized, rather than one size fits all incarceration). Drug courts don't always work, sometimes they can be systemically flawed. This American Life presented just such a case a few years ago, describing a judge who abused the process. But in most jurisdictions, drug courts lower costs to the system while putting a lot of people in a far better place. A similar institution, a "mental health court," might feed people from courtrooms into community treatment facilities, with monitoring and care, while putting them on probation instead of placing them in jail. This would, of course, work best with significantly increased funding for humane and competent mental treatment facilities. But at least some of those costs would be offset by lower burdens on the justice system and systems of incarceration. Such a system would certainly help more people, and it deserves wider public discussion.