zlacker

>>gruseo+(OP)
In the United States, the problem started with the war on drugs. The increasing privatization of the prison system made crime a business opportunity, which in turn lead to more things being criminalized.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_...

But that's not all; prison labor is now used as cheap labor to compete with foreign countries, instituting a new age of under-the-radar slavery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwT6CisM0mU

The more you look at this cyclic process, the more disturbing it becomes.

>>macemo+65
Another major part of the problem is that we no longer institutionalize most of the mentally ill (also a phenomenon starting around 1960-70). Many of them become homeless, and a few commit crimes.

>>yummyf+66
America has never had a working mental health infrastructure; we stopped institutionalizing people because American mental institutions in the 40s were about the most horrible things you can imagine:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1220177...

I think the history of our neglect as a society of the mentally ill has little to tell us about crime and a lot to tell us about the homeless underclass in America.

To digress: I just visited DC again a couple weeks ago. You go in a public bathroom right outside the Washington Monument and there are big signs next to the sinks that say "NO BATHING". I felt ashamed.

>>jberry+8b
I think the history of our neglect as a society of the mentally ill has little to tell us about crime

That makes sense if you look at one as related directly to the other or vice versa (aka mostly not), but if you look at both as symptoms of a bigger issue then it becomes readily apparent that they are highly related: Americans don't want to deal with 'undesirables'. Lock em up or make them homeless, whatever, just as long as we don't have to deal with them.