tecomsin, you made so many important points that clearly demonstrate that prisons or prison-like facilities are definitely NOT the place for the mentally ill, despite them breaking laws as a result of it.

You wrote:

"Paranoid psychoses can be very dangerous so it is right to take such people off the streets. The question is how to treat them."

Definitely not like a criminal, in my view. I see such environments as totally counterproductive to mental health recovery.

You also wrote:

"This amounted to armed men banging on my door sometimes many times a day shouting my name out loud. This just fed directly into my paranoia..."

My goodness! Of course it would!

I became very interested and concerned about this topic when I read a book by journalist Pete Earley called "Crazy - A Father Search Through America's Mental Health Madness". His college age son experienced his first manic episode and as part of that broke into a house and destroyed things. The father had a huge fight keeping his young mentally ill son out of jail. That motivated him to do research on the topic of mentally ill in jail. If anyone is interested, his website is at:

Helpful Recommendations: Why Jails And Prisons Shouldn't Be Asylums - Pete Earley