Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
It really comes down to how expensive and how dystopian people want things to get. If someone has a history of minor offences, should we just lock them up indefinitely? Even violent criminals are going to get out of jail at some point unless we just have indefinite periods of detention. The vast majority of violent offenders don't escalate their crimes to murder, and it's obviously not really possible to predict which ones will do so, so are we OK with just jailing them all indefinitely?
Or should we create a large mental health apparatus that can treat these people and basically commit them to that? We've had that in the past, but it was gutted through deinstitutionalization in the 1990s and 2000s to save money.
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Involuntarily committing people is also a form of imprisonment. The main difference between that and jail, is that in jail the health services are voluntary. As it is, the ability of the government to hold someone, without conviction, for mental health reasons far exceeds that same power for reasons of criminal prosecution.
As for dystopianism, it's getting pretty dystopian out there as it is. Downtown is full of thousands of people dying and doing drugs right in the open and in front of small businesses. Families, with two income earners, can't afford rent. Ownership is being consumed by both the government and large corporations.
Whatever is going on needs to change.