On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:55:26 -0700, Jay Honeck
wrote in .com:

With no real help available (again, thanks to the "liberal"
politicians, who have closed all the mental hospitals) they have two
very real, very awful choices: Starve, or steal. We all know what
their activity of choice is -- you or I would make the same choice.


Now I don't know if you'd call then California Governor Ronald Reagan
a liberal, but it was he who doubled the state militia, and emptied
the state mental hospitals in California. Up until that time I never
saw homeless on the streets.

It's convenient for you to blame the "liberals," but it's seems
contrary to the facts:

http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-06-08-04-epr.htm
For example, during his tenure as governor here in California he
closed most of the state mental hospitals. He and his advisors
recognized that the advent of psychotropic drugs made it possible
to control many of the symptoms of serious mental illnesses such
schizophrenia, and to allow those suffering from these diseases to
function again in society.

He convinced the legislature (controlled at the time by Democrats)
that it would be cheaper, more humane, and more effective to treat
the mentally ill in community "half-way houses". The legislature,
with some help from civil libertarians, bought into the idea and
closed many of the state mental hospitals. This trend eventually
worked its way across the country. Unfortunately, the money
needed to set up community mental health clinics never
materialized at the level needed for an effective system; and,
changes in the laws championed by advocates for the mentally ill
made it nearly impossible to force mentally ill individuals to
remain on needed medications. The unintended consequence of
Reagan's no doubt sincere efforts to reduce government
expenditures for the mentally ill and to provide them more humane
treatment surrounds us every day. A significant part of our
homeless population is comprised of mentally ill people who do not
take their medication on a regular basis, and who do not receive
the support that they need to cope with the stresses of everyday
life.





http://americanradioworks.publicradi...es/jails5.html
During the Reagan Administration's budget-cutting drive in the
1980's, the federal government slashed funding for such programs,
Teplin points out. "In 1975 it was around ten dollars per
capita—and these figures are in constant dollars. By 1992 that
dropped to just over five dollars per capita. Now, theoretically,
state governments were supposed to pick up the slack but in
reality they simply have not."



http://www.hscareers.com/news/articles.asp?id=529
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - November 26, 2003

These two are not alone. The American Psychiatric Association has
estimated that as many as one in five of those behind bars has a
serious mental illness.

Some 300,000 people in U.S. prisons suffer from mental disorders
ranging from major depression and post-traumatic stress to
schizophrenia - three to four times more than the number in
mental- health hospitals. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch
argued that the penal system is "not only serving as a warehouse
for the mentally ill but is also acting as an incubator for worse
illness and psychiatric breakdowns."

Fifty years ago, says HRW, more than half a million Americans
lived in public psychiatric hospitals. Today, proper hospitals
house fewer than 80,000 people.

This is largely a sign of progress. The development of new drugs
has made it possible for the mentally ill to be treated outside a
hospital. And there is far better legal protection to prevent
people from being locked up against their will.

Nevertheless, things have not gone according to plan. When many of
the country's mental-health hospitals were shut down in the '60s,
the idea was that patients would be looked after by local health
systems. Instead, the mentally ill often have little access to
treatment, and many have ended up on the streets. According to the
National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness, up to
one in four homeless people has a serious mental illness.

Once on the streets, and with only meager health care, it is often
only a matter of time before a mentally ill person commits a crime
and is sent to jail.

For instance, the number of mentally ill in Santa Clara County's
jails jumped by 300 percent in the four years after a nearby
California state hospital closed down. Another study showed that
the arrest rate of mentally ill people rose fivefold in the first
eight years after the rules tightened about who was allowed into
mental hospitals.

Tougher sentencing policies are also pushing mentally ill people
toward prison. The United States' prison population has more than
quadrupled over the past 20 years, largely because of the war on
drugs.