I read this response a lot in debates like this, about "involuntary commitment" and "refuse to comply." I didn't downvote you but I'll ask you the same thing I always ask: How, precisely, do you propose to square this with the myriad court rulings that have said that what you propose is unconstitutional?
We cannot simply clap people in a room and not let them go until they're "cured." So what do we do in the meantime? I know what I prefer, but I'm routinely told that Seattle and King County and Washington State can't afford such things, so what we do?
These are human beings, not simply objects to be dealt with.
(For what it's worth, I live in Seattle, ride public transit as my only means of transportation, and spend time on both sides of the cut in places like Pioneer Square. It is not a lawless Mad Max hellhole out here and I'm rapidly beginning to think that people who hold that view either don't live here or are deliberately looking for trouble. I'm definitely not saying that bad shit doesn't happen but both my anecdotal experience and those of my friends and family alongside the actual statistics show that it's not the uncontrollable catastrophe people make it out to be.)
> How, precisely, do you propose to square this with the myriad court rulings that have said that what you propose is unconstitutional?
It's a fair question, and the answer is not particularly appealing, but there certainly is an answer. An incident was mentioned elsewhere in the thread where a mentally ill person attempted to throw someone from a freeway overpass. That's attempted murder. Throw the book at them.
> RCW 9.94A.540 Mandatory minimum terms.
> (b) An offender convicted of the crime of assault in the first degree or assault of a child in the first degree where the offender used force or means likely to result in death or intended to kill the victim shall be sentenced to a term of total confinement not less than five years.
Not less than 5 years can be a whole lot of years, and the Constitution doesn't have a whole lot to say on the matter. Pretty much any act of random violence can be met with the prosecution throwing the book at the assailant and sending them off to spend the much of the rest of their life in a small room in Louisiana. This is obviously not a great solution, and if ranking solutions by quality it's toward the low end, but it's certainly available. Punching a police officer is a felony. Shoving a bus driver is a felony. Waving a knife at a person is a felony. Clapping people in a room and not letting them go until they're "cured" isn't an option, but clapping them in a room and just leaving them there is.
We cannot simply clap people in a room and not let them go until they're "cured." So what do we do in the meantime? I know what I prefer, but I'm routinely told that Seattle and King County and Washington State can't afford such things, so what we do?
These are human beings, not simply objects to be dealt with.
(For what it's worth, I live in Seattle, ride public transit as my only means of transportation, and spend time on both sides of the cut in places like Pioneer Square. It is not a lawless Mad Max hellhole out here and I'm rapidly beginning to think that people who hold that view either don't live here or are deliberately looking for trouble. I'm definitely not saying that bad shit doesn't happen but both my anecdotal experience and those of my friends and family alongside the actual statistics show that it's not the uncontrollable catastrophe people make it out to be.)