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Ending asylums began long before Regan
Regan ramped up funneling them into prisons, which is basically why the Kirk quote is disingenuous bullshit. Can supportive rehabilitative programs be the answer, even if they’re involuntary and potentially lifelong? Maybe. But that’s not what happens a lot of the time. American politicians, especially republicans, continually push to either limit funding as much as possible, end, or privatize (which only works for the more lucrative things like drug and alcohol and disability services and even those are widely considered to suffer under private equity). Of course, their solution for “end” is throw them to the wolves, which in practice means homelessness, crime, increasing drug use, etc and eventually prison when those things disrupt communities. Kirk wasn’t an idiot. He’s like Newsom, he knew the most likely place these people end up is prison and he didn’t care bc he saw them as subhuman scum
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The fact of the matter is treating serious and persistent mental illness is not lucrative. In fact it is a financial sink if you choose a rehabilitative model, and even an asylum model, which is generally more cost efficient (but can be done with some dignity) is still quite expensive.
The fucked up part is that prisons are quite expensive too but less so and as a result are quite lucrative to their owners. They also are culturally built into this sense of redemptive justice, as if punishment of the offender actually does something to bring peace to the offended besides deluding them that the chaotic and violent world won’t wrong them again because one unjust act has been forcibly atoned without creating any sense of remorse before returning the person back to society (just exposing them to one of the most traumatizing and violent environments for years or decades with no support, what could go wrong?).
So we ignore mountains of evidence that rehabilitation oriented programming is overall more successful because it’s not perfect, someone will still get murdered and assaulted! And they won’t get horribly punished! And we stick with our terrible system that objectively results in much more people getting murdered and assaulted
Just to add, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act repealed Carter's Mental Health Systems Act - effectively defunding community based health organizations that would support those tossed out of institutions and onto the street. Reagan and Republicans more generally just didn't give a shit what happened to these people as long as it didn't cost them any money and that is largely why the homeless situation is where it is today.
It also should not be forgotten that shortly after this, Rush Limbaugh began a decades-long campaign against the homeless on his radio show, constantly demonizing them and attempting to paint homelessness as a choice made exclusively by addicts and the societally worthless.
Very good point, I wasn't aware of how that prisons are more profitable than asylums. It makes it seem like the prison companies and republicans might have had some motives in common to push for ending asylums. Prison companies obviously would want more ~~slaves~~ prisoners to increase profit. Republicans would see it as a built in source of voter suppression in certain urban generally left leaning areas since prisoners either can't vote or vote in different more generally rural areas. This goes to show that economic and political interests can have a big effect on issues like this that seem like more social issues at first glance.