Reply #8: County jails are the default mental health system in California

[Hekate]

It's a crying shame. Often the street folks are dual-diagnosis (mental illness plus drug or alcohol problems) probably due to self-medication, so they come into the system not because they're talking to themselves but because of things like public intoxication.

Locally there's been an emphasis on teaching law enforcement personnel how to deal with the mentally ill, which is not a skill they are necessarily suited for.

Think about it -- most people are drawn to law enforcement because they make a distinction between bad guys and good guys and they want to preserve order. If a person is out of order (breaking the law) they are bad and must be stopped; if irrational behavior escalates, so does the effort to stop it.

Mental illness of course is not about badness and goodness. At a bare minimum, using cops and jails this way is unfair both to the mentally ill and the cops.

I give our law enforcement folks credit for at least recognizing the problem and trying to do something about it. I wish I could say the same about the state and federal government -- and more so the feds because they are manifestly taking money from California and not giving it back (we're now a donor state).

Hekate