"He was complaining how we have shut down asylums and throw those people into prisons now."
In some places they do, most don't. Around here, if a person comes up on charges and has provable mental issues they mainly get sent for treatment. But that doesn't include confinement. My niece works at a treatment center and they have some creepy, scary, demented looking patients. She watches them go thru their treatment and then go to the parking lot where they sell their prescription or trade what they got for something else, money or other drugs. Would it make any difference to arrest them, again? They'd just be put right back into the same revolving door system.
We have had two crimes in our are that really shook people up. One of them was the murder of a young girl by a neighbor. He was about 18 or 19. The families got along well and there had never been a hint of trouble with the boy. He was asked to watch the girl one night, she was already in bed asleep, the parents had to go out for an hour or two. He murdered her, cut her open, did unspeakable things. Then he hid the body. Of course he was caught and, when his time in court came, his attorney tried to get him off on mental grounds. The judge was not having it. He said if the guy went to a mental facility they couldn't keep him for more than 5-7 years. He ended up going to a state prison and, whenever he comes up for parole, there are petitions to keep him in, and petitions to let him out. Last time he was up for parole they discovered he'd been corresponding with a 12 year old girl. He has stated that, if he's released, he might do it again. But, some people say that's not a reason to keep him confined.
We had another crime that involved two homeless drug addicts. One of them killed the other to get about $25. Then he got a can of gasoline and set the body on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime. Again, there were argument for sending him into a treatment program, which he was already in, verses prison. Again, he got prison.
Onepoint you are totally correct about the asylums being horrific places. Some of them, poorly run, were total Hell Holes. But many of them were run with a degree of professionalism. And the patients were fed, clothed, bathed, medicated, and protected from themselves, from the elements and from other patients who would do them harm. The people who were confined there simply couldn't function in society.
My father-in-law worked at a state hospital. I don't know how he did it. Everything from alcoholics to murderers. And a lot of the in-between. He was vehemently opposed to closing the state hospitals and turning the patients out into a world they just couldn't handle. Nor could society handle having them.
And, how did they get treated? A bunch of people thought the negatives were worse than the positives and they came up with the concept of deinstitutionalization. Why, those poor people shouldn't be locked up. They should be living free, with relatives or maybe group homes. They can go to therapy sessions at a local clinic three our four times a week. They'll have better lives if we free them. Some of those people couldn't put their pants on, let alone make it to the clinic. And they never funded group homes or the staff to run them, at least not at the level needed.
So now, those people are living under bridges. And in old buses. And they aren't getting ANY treatment at all.
And they're targets for criminals. If a homeless person disappears, who reports it? They're subject to abuse and being used and manipulated.
But hey, at least they're free.
