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The model for mental health care shifted from institutions to community based care. The problem is that folks who won't say on medication disrupt and deny everyone from accessing public resources.

A crazy naked homeless man taking a shit in the middle of a public library is a problem. Yet in our society, it is often difficult to remove these sorts of folks.

These are difficult problems without easy solutions. We moved away from institutionalizing people because it was cruel and ineffective. But we're left with hard cases who are difficult to deal with.

because it was cruel and ineffective

As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working out for ya?"

It was a classic case of people wanting to be litigious or do-gooders and making the situation much worse than it already was rather than accepting the best option that was available.

From what I know of the time, it wasn't just an imperfect system, it was an imperfect system with rampant opportunities for abuse.

Have you ever read about the Magdalene Asylums?

To my knowledge it wasn't the less-than-perfect parts of institutionalization that caused us to get rid of them, it was the abuse of aspects of those systems that caused us to abandon them, and thus it is the abuse of those systems to which we should probably compare our current solution.

One possible missed opportunity of course- institutionalization has been marked, and may never be seriously considered again. Yet it's possible with sufficient oversight it could be a useful system.

> The problem is that folks who won't say on medication disrupt and deny everyone from accessing public resources.

The problem is that the move to community based care was a move to say individuals have to do the work themselves and should expect no help from the community. If we were serious about better outcomes for people with mental disabilities, health and domestic care would be free for those that use those services.

Regarding the food item from Whole Foods, I doubt that she needed to shoplift in order to eat. Even if she did, there are certainly cheaper and more accessible places to shoplift than Whole Foods. This is not Bourbon Restoration France.

In my experience, when a crazy person gets the urge to take someone else's thing, then that person is not thinking, "Oh, it's theirs, hands off." The crazy person is just acting out the urges, and the lady was genuinely surprised that the police officers would have a problem with what she was doing.

I don't think the article was proposing ankle bracelets for everyone. That was just one solution that worked for some of Mr. Dart's patients. Incidentally, how messed up is it, that the sheriff is in charge of creating a decent home for the mentally ill in his district.

Those of us who deal with the marginally criminally insane, know that the system is just not set up to handle them. These people need adult supervision, and the social service just throws them into the street, to be arrested and put in jail every time.

You had me dangling by a thread, I was still sort of with you... then you declare that disallowing public nudity is tyranny?

My friend, overstatement is a quick & easy way to lose support.

Public nudity is mere morals. IMO nothing law should deal with. Tyranny is a strong word, but it seems unreasonable interference.

It's a tiny bit more than morals (e.g., sanitation) but either way, I'm not commenting on whether law should deal with it. I'm objecting to the use of the word 'tyranny'.

(e.g., sanitation)

Really? Is there even a single documented case of a sanitation problem caused by mere nudity?

It would be hard to document such cases, when public nudity has been restricted for thousands of years.

You should not have to stretch your imagination, however, to figure out all the possible transmission vectors.

Clean nudity is inferior to clean clothing, that's OK.

However, we allow fully clothed homeless that haven't bathed in months, or even anybody with poor personal hygiene. We allow dirty street, dirty buses and public transports, kids playing in sewers in bad area of town, hoarders and countless other documented hygiene threats.

So let's be intellectually honest and accept that nakedness is a morality issue first and foremost.

> Public nudity is mere morals.

So are laws against killing people, theft, and beating animals.

I'm always dismayed at people who think that the "good" ethical norms that they like are somehow scientific, universally agreed upon, and absolute, whereas the "bad" ethical norms that other people have are merely cultural, subjective, and contingent.

We could do worse than to require a few years of ethical theory as a precondition to graduating high school.

All those actions you stated have a consequence for some other than the primary participant.

Killing someone derives them or life, theft of a possession, beating an animal hurts the animal.

Public Nudity may not be comfortable to you but what's the consequence beyond that?

Seeing naked people in public hurts most people.

For beating animals you might be right. I don't think so, but maybe you are right. For the rest you are not.

Also you somehow see to confuse moral and ethical. Moral is "Eww, that's itchy." For example sodomy. Ethics are a reflection and systematization of the first. The latter is abstract.

There are no universal ethics. But several sound systems. Kant's Categorical imperative, several utilitarianism. Hell even Hedonism is ethics and IMO a way better than morals.

But all these have in common they do give explanations and justifications, unlike morals. Morals is just "that's nothing one should do" or "We never did that." And I can't see a ethics that would demand the criminalization of public nudity. However it is very easy to reduce to criminalization of killing and theft to a sound first principle. And IMO only these first principles are important enough to force them upon others.

> There are also issues where people ask why it is that it is legal for men to go topless, yet is criminal for women to go topless? Should not the law apply equally to both men and women? That is a reasonable question and there is no answer that justifies this discrimination that is not intrinsically sexist.

Here in New York City, both men and women are permitted to go topless.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France

Interesting post.

I'm not fond of declaring her mentally ill based on the offenses she has committed. Clearly, she isn't living an ordinary life, but plenty of ordinary people have used drugs, drank alcohol, trespassed and stole during the course of their lives. Prostitution might be a different case, but prostitution ultimately also is a choice. I can even imagine her shoplifting because she wasn't able to obtain the necessary money through different means: nobody would hire her, and whenever she prostitutes she gets arrested. Also, it appears that she doesn't rip out her veins when she isn't incarcerated - otherwise she would be dead by now. Furthermore it is not uncommon for "normal" people who get arrested to be put on suicide watch. The tendency for self affliction perhaps isn't so uncommon for the imprisoned.

I think that if the government would stop disturbing her in her daily life, a Pareto optimum would be reached. Naturally we have the moral obligation to kindly offer help with her problems - rehab, etc. - but shouldn't have the right to force her into anything as long as she isn't a menace to society.

What I'm trying to say is that the system now is turning her into a menace to society. Stop it!

Public nudity has been taboo since long before we had governments and laws. Even uncontacted peoples generally cover their genitalia even if they are otherwise totally naked. Regardless of first-principles freedom-based arguments, US legislators did not create proscriptions against public nudity and they are not going to be able to eliminate them.

Homosexuality was treated similarly negatively in much of the world and much of human history, but US legislators have managed to move away from it being illegal.

Not true in the slightest. Ancient Greece and Rome all the way up untill the Holy Roman Empire had no problems with homosexuality especially when it was citizens against members of the lower classes.

Homosexuality was quite common and accepted in Europe until the widespread adoption of Christianity.

What you are talking about was pederasty, not homosexuality.

It includes pederasty but is not exclusive to it. A male citizen having sex with a male slave when both are adults was considered fine too. From my understanding it was acceptable so long as it was a citizen with anyone of lower class.

> "If police are arresting people without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, then it is the police that are acting illegally here. You are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason. If he attempts to do so, it is false arrest, and you have the right under the law, upheld by the supreme court, to use any necessary force to resist illegal arrest.

What constitutes whether a police officer has the right to "stop and identify" someone varies quite widely from state to state[1]. Before attempting to do so, it's a good idea to know the explicit details for the current state one is residing.

Some states actually have claims that you must identify yourself when stopped if the police officer asks. Failure to do so can lead to arrest under laws of the state:

"Five states’ laws (Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, and Ohio) explicitly impose an obligation to provide identifying information."

"Seven states (Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio, and Vermont) explicitly impose a criminal penalty for noncompliance with the obligation to identify oneself."

"In five states (Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island), failure to identify oneself is one factor to be considered in a decision to arrest. In all but Rhode Island, the consideration arises in the context of loitering or prowling."

"Virginia makes it a nonjailable misdemeanor to refuse to identify oneself to a conservator of the peace when one is at the scene of a breach of the peace witnessed by that conservator."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Obli...

> Some states actually have claims that you must identify yourself when stopped if the police officer asks. Failure to do so can lead to arrest under laws of the state:

This is false. You are misstating or misreading the article. You only must identify yourself (this does not mean you have to carry ID) if you are under a Terry stop and are in a state which has specifically enacted legislation requiring identification during a Terry stop. A Terry stop requires reasonable suspicion a crime has been committed. This is why I specifically and carefully said "you are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason." In states with stop and identify laws that allow for it, he can require you identify yourself given reasonable suspicion of a crime. In other states, he needs probable cause.

That's likely to be more costly than prison since it requires round the clock medical care, and is no better than a prison since they are locked up.

Some people need round the clock medical care. Making the problem go away by just legalizing everything, including petty theft, is a silly solution.

>I propose that public nudity and refusing to give your name to police when they have no cause to ask it are both fundamental rights of man and that any society which denies these rights is tyrannical and any person who denies these rights is an enemy of humanity.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.... whoa. I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet. That being said, San Francisco apparently has no punishment for being nude in public and yet I've only seen nudity in public twice in the 6 years of having a full-time job there. So maybe it should be removed from the law and most people will continue to cover-up out of personal modesty.

>I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet

But...why? Is there any good reason, or is it just puritanism?

Oh come on, it's not like people will start walking around naked just because...

Honestly, I think if public nudity was common, no-one would care about it. When you go to the beach and see people in swimming costumes, there isn't really much left to the imagination. You can already pretty much figure out what they look like naked, but no-one cares, we're all used to it. Society just places a weird importance on nipples and genitals. But just women's nipples. Even though men's nipples kind of look the same anyway. You could take a swimsuit catalogue and cut the nipples off the men and glue them onto the women and turn it into porn.

If you think about it, we're just animals. It's really crazy that we can't just walk around in our natural state freely because we tend to feel really weird about looking at other members of our own species.

What if I've got it backwards and other animals are just as prudish? When a dog is barking at another dog, maybe he's really saying, "hey, check out this weirdo - he's naked! Get the hell out of here, you pervert!"

"swimming costumes"... are you British? :)

But yes, this apprehension of nudity is something I've always found so bizarre. Why is seeing skin of our species such a big deal? At what point of our social evolution did it evolve that way (because the idea of clothing is pretty universal to humans).

The idea of clothing isn't quite universal, but nearly so. Still, we're something of an outlier in how serious our nudity taboo is. As far as I can tell most cultures are ok with women going around topless and most think that it's ok for men and women to see each other naked when bathing, though I guess Hollywood is changing that.

If you want an idea of what the imagination can fill in when someone is in a swimming costume look up "bubbling"; the examples here will show you how it works:

http://gizmodo.com/5627807/bubbling-tricks-your-mind-to-make...

Link is technically safe for work but looks NSFW (that being the entire point of the illusion)

Some people engage in self-destructive behaviour because their early life was destroyed by abuse. These behaviours can be things like taking drugs, risky sex, self-harm, and so on. Obviously not everyone doing these things has had awful experiences in early life.

For these people it's not acceptable to just let them get on with it. They're not happy, they're not fulfilling their potential, they are not well.

This is why I stopped voting for any politicians years ago. It's just enabling.

> In a fabulously wealthy nation, how is it that she has come to need to shoplift food to be able to eat.

She is crazy. A sane poor American can get food from any number of government programs, private charities, begging, or working a couple of hours a day at nearly any job.