Prison vs. Mental asylum

The deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness was good in that it’s not right for so many people living with a mental illness to be forced into such an oppressive life.

It doesn’t mean that it was right to take away health insurance or health care access for the sake of “saving money.”

Prisons don’t afford mental health access in many situations.

It’s sad that prison ends up being the new asylum.

Progress. Progress. Progress. May we talk about that, instead please?

Both are prohibitively expensive. In pre-modern times the insane were cared for by their families or left to die on the street, and people were rarely imprisoned (typical punishments usually involved death, exile or in some countries slavery). The invention of prisons and mental asylums was considered a great step forward in terms of being more humane than the previous systems.

If she goes to a mental asylum for her crimes – that means that she can claim insanity as a basis for committing those crimes. Therefore, that is not a good idea. She was in her full mind, and intentionally committed the crimes, and she should be imprisoned for committing these crimes knowingly and intentionally (in some cases, with obvious motive). Too many defendants claim “temporary insanity”.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to get out of a mental institution once institutionalized – so perhaps that’d be better. Even if she’d be pardoned by someone later on, it’d be from a mental institution.

Anyway, it’s neither here nor there because it won’t happen.