$1500 Cash Reward

I was going to suggest this tried and true solution:
Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)

Yes, a classic.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

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.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
Personally, I would classify Charles Manson as bad, and John Hinkley
as deranged, not necessarily bad, drug users as sick, and a good
portion of those in jail as mentally defective. Each classification
requires different treatment, but none deserve to be abused.

Larry, let's talk turkey here. This problem was entirely created by
liberal (what a stupid, inaccurate name!) politicians who -- in the
name of "personal rights" -- have made it completely impossible to
commit someone to a mental hospital against their will.

Because it would be a violation of their personal "rights" to send
them to a place where they can get the help they so desperately need,
they are placed in "out-patient care" -- with no enforcement or
repercussions if they don't show up for treatment.

And, of course, they don't show up. Nor do they take their meds,
which make them feel worse, not better.

So, what happens to these people? They fall through the cracks of
society. After years of drug or alcohol abuse, they are so damaged
that they are incapable of holding a job. Their abuse also triggers
long bouts of deep depression, when they are completely unable to
function in society.

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.

They then end up in prison, mixed in with the truly awful, truly
violent criminals. It's a horrible, awful, terribly unfair system that
has been ENTIRELY created by well-meaning people just like YOU, who
thought that the minor abuses then taking place in the mental
hospitals merited their complete and utter elimination.

Blaming this on "Bush" or the "Religious Right" is so completely
illogical, and so completely ludicrous, that I just had to speak up.
This problem is just one of many stemming from Lyndon Johnson's "Great
Society", which wreaked havoc on so much of our nation -- all done
with the best of intentions by naive, inexperienced -- no, let's say
it like it is -- STUPID people.

Why/how do I know all this? Because I've got a 57-year old drug and
alcohol-dependent sister who has spent much of her adult life in and
out of "treatment programs", and is now facing prison time for repeat
drunken driving.

She's lost her home, her career, her husband, her son, and everything
she held dear, thanks to her illness. Over the years our family has
tried on multiple occasions to get her the help she so desperately
needed, to no avail.

Under the system folks like you created, her "rights" as a mentally
ill person have guaranteed her a life of living hell. Because she
can't be committed, no help is possible until she demands it -- and
waiting for a mentally ill person to recognize that they need help can
be a long wait, indeed.

snip

Jay, I feel your pain (literally) because of similar situation in my family.
There was a fairly in-depth discussion of this topic on one of the other
newsgroups I frequent. IIRC, the peak of mental incarcerations occured in
1953, and the closing of such facilities was been more or less linear since
then. So one can't really blame
Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan/Carter/Ford/Nixon/Johnson/Kennedy/Eisenhour unless
you blame them all. And it was a Supreme Court decision that people
couldn't be commited unless there was clearly demonstrated that they were a
danger to themselves or others that caused the sharp increase in homeless
people in the 1980s. If people realized how many people used to be locked
up in mental institutions, they would be shocked. I can imagine the attacks
from both the "left" and the "right" if Bush proposed a Constitutional
Amendment to allow people to be locked up "for their own good", but I be for
it. When these people aren't locked up, the rest of us are the ones that
live in virtual prisons.

On 2007-06-10 00:50:53 -0700, Larry Dighera said:

On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:22:36 -0000, wrote in
.com:

Well, now these young men get to find out what its like in an ass-
pounding prison...

So, in your mind the just punishment for burglary is anal rape?

I think my own objection to the reference is that, in my view, prisons
are supposed to be used to prevent crime, not enable it. Making prisons
a safe haven for criminals to conduct their criminal acts does not seem
to me to be a particularly constructive approach.

The predators in prisons need to be isolated from the rest of the
population, if necessary. They are not a legitimate part of the
'punishment' of imprisonment.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor