Since our leaders, with the applause of the fiscal conservatives, have determined funds for facilities that treat the mentally ill are budget busters, the role of police officers has gotten more difficult and dangerous. The article addresses what has changed. To cavalierly discount the changing role of the police is not helpful.
Where has the money gone?
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As many as one in five of the 2.1 million Americans in jail and prison are seriously mentally ill, far outnumbering the number of mentally ill who are in mental hospitals, according to a comprehensive study released Tuesday.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/national/22MENT.html
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Three decades of growth in America’s prison population has quietly nudged the nation across a sobering threshold: for the first time, more than one in every 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison. According to figures gathered and analyzed by the Pew Public Safety Performance Project, the number of people behind bars in the United States continued to climb in 2007, saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime.
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http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/...1-1_FORWEB.pdf
The fiscally responsible mantra is: build more prisons to house and fewer centers to treat the mentally ill?
Of course sending our young overseas to kill in wars of choice is the sensible thing to do.
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When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and that rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.
Coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, a Nobel laureate now estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing America more than $3 trillion.
That estimate from Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also serves as the title of his new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," which hits store shelves Friday.
The book, co-authored with Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, builds on previous research that was published in January 2006. The two argued then and now that the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is wildly underestimated.
When other factors are added — such as interest on debt, future borrowing for war expenses, the cost of a continued military presence in Iraq and lifetime health-care and counseling for veterans — they think that the wars' costs range from $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
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http://cromalternativemoney.org/inde...n-dollars.html