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As a society that continues to fail to properly address mental health and addictions issues particularly in indigenous communities perhaps we all should take our share of responsibility for this offence rather than single out and declare how much we hate the justice system that is only called upon to clean up after the potentially preventable disaster has already happened?
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We need to recognize how remarkably difficult this problem is. You mentioned 24/7 wraparound care - yes, that's probably what it will take for the most damaged. But how many people are lining up to take jobs that combine the worst elements of addiction counselling and policing? How many would want to spend their days and nights with damaged, often abusive clients, hanging around in alleys and parks with junkies? Pay them $100k, $150k and I still don't see anywhere close to the necessary number of people choosing that as a vocation. How many of us in this thread would want the job?
Beyond that, we live in a liberal society. People are free to come and go as they please - regardless of whether they're homeless or depressed or mentally ill or addicts - so long as they aren't committing a crime. IIRC, less than 10 per cent of people who use the needle exchange program in Calgary avail themselves of the free counselling provided. So how do you compel people to accept treatment?
Just look at the absolute ####show around placing indigenous children in care. Social workers try to stop the cycle by removing children from toxic and abusive homes, but politicians and the media call this an injustice and try to have it stopped. So now they leave children in neglectful and abusive homes because they've been told the numbers have to come down.
So blaming our society for not figuring this out yet seems to me like blaming scientists for not solving cancer yet. Just because a problem is persistent doesn't mean nobody is doing anything about it. We've been working on this problem for more than 50 years.