What does DTK need?

[ijmorlan]

The "DIE" and sign-throwing incidents ... wow. I have not witnessed similar. I walk a lot on King St, Water St, Francis St, but probably not as much as you do, and probably much less after dark. These do feel like mental health issues, but not as harmless as many such issues are. As a society, we do need to address these. I think it's quite difficult to completely eliminate such problems, but certainly we need to work on them.

These are difficult for many reasons but one problem I see is that a lot of the debate (if it can be called that) is between “leftists” (to stereotype) who want to provide poverty and mental health supports; and “rightists” (to stereotype again) who want to lock them all up and throw away the key.

Of course, the real response is a combination of various responses. Obviously, just having harsher and harsher punishments is a recipe for enormous expense in the criminal justice system, not to mention the downstream effects of incarcerating lots of people. And for crimes that arise from desperation or mental health, the deterrence concept doesn’t really apply (by contrast, credibly threaten jail for economic crimes committed by rich people, and watch the crime disappear — those people can do the math, and will do anything to stay away from prison).

On the other hand, many of these crimes are crimes and are serious, even if not individually then in their overall effect on the city. So the mental health supports cannot be seen as an optional thing that is available to people if they want it; if somebody is regularly caught committing petty crimes, and it is judged to be a consequence of mental health problems, they need to be forced to participate in appropriate treatment. If they won’t, then that is tough for them: their right to whatever doesn’t trump the rights of the rest of us.