Not a prison alternative:

Family members and first responders are among those who can now file a petition on behalf of an adult they believe “is unlikely to survive safely” without supervision and whose condition is rapidly deteriorating. They also can file if an adult needs services and support to prevent relapse or deterioration that would likely result in “grave disability or serious harm” to themselves or others.

It doesnt really have anything to do with homeless people, either. It reads to me like it’s designed to get people into conservatorships and not much else.

WOW does this article bend over backwards to obscure the likelihood that “treatment” is not going to be voluntary. First of all, this is not affected individuals applying for these services, as that would just be social services, a thing that already exists. Here’s how this system works:

Family members and first responders are among those who can now file a petition on behalf of an adult they believe “is unlikely to survive safely” without supervision and whose condition is rapidly deteriorating. They also can file if an adult needs services and support to prevent relapse or deterioration that would likely result in “grave disability or serious harm” to themselves or others.

As far as I can tell, this isn’t even remotely exclusive to homeless people, and it feels like burying the lead that Cali’s homeless population is mentioned at all. This is anyone with a psychotic disorder that can be forced into “treatment” by a badge or random family member who claims they’re “deteriorating.” If you think that sounds like it’s putting people with psychotic disorders at a even more heightened risk of being forced into conservatorships, you’d be right:

A person who does not successfully complete a plan could be subject to conservatorship and involuntary treatment, said Tal Klement, a deputy public defender in San Francisco who is among critics of the new process.

The article immediately moved to muddy this fact by following it up with two paragraphs that start with this sentence:

But the statute also allows the court to dismiss the proceedings if the individual declines to participate or to follow the agreement.

That’s all you need to read - “allows” is extremely different from “requires.” The court is in no way required to respect the wishes of the affected individual as the article irresponsibly attempts to imply, and as these courts are likely to be biased to view the affected individual as a crazy person and the people that reported them as Good Samaritans “just trying to help,” they are probably far more likely to opt for treatment, consensual or not, and this court becomes an excellent method of fast tracking vulnerable people into conservatorships.

Assuming “first responders” make any use of this, maybe this shields a few people from jail, but as cops aren’t really opposed to sending people to jail, it’s more likely they’ll just use this system when they suspect someone of having a psychotic disorder but can’t get them for an actual crime, if they bother to use it at all.

I think the claims I’ve heard irl are something along the lines of “can’t trust Google search results, they’re censoring 'em!” I figure the things they’re mad Google “censors” are probably literal or borderline fascist content - and I also tend to assume they’re probably misusing the word censor. I think the tenuous connection here is just that yeah Google is probably doing some shady stuff with their search results.

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Might’ve taken this in good faith had I not checked your comment history to see you insisting all drag queens are a danger to children, so let’s just dress you down and block you real quick, mkay?

The point has been made in another reply to the initial comment that rehabilitation would still yield better results than incarceration for keeping the “people on the street” safe, as the only way incarceration is able to lower the number of “dangerous convicts” is by putting them in a cell for life. When rehabilitation is successful, the number of “dangerous criminals” can actually go down in a way that does not deprive those individuals from seeing trees for the rest of their lives.

Additionally, convicts absolutely can and do hurt people in prison, the people hurt just happen to be other convicts, not to mention the violence they often face from the people who run the place, who have a tendency to enter the field of incarceration with authoritarian personality types and the intent of mistreating or exploiting prisoners. All this disregarded, despite the fact that you acknowledge the possibility that some of those who end up in these facilities are innocents - the only category of person you are supposedly interested in protecting is not protected in these institutions as they currently exist.

There’s much more I could say about prisons to make this point, but what I’m saying is that prisons do not provide a neutral experience, they are not just people sitting in empty rooms experiencing nothing - they are places that generally leave people more damaged than when they came in, and often inflict that damage for years, in some cases for something as victimless as a marijuana charge. Thus, while rehabilitation has the potential to concretely improve society and the lives of people (y’know, the thing convicts are), incarceration as it currently exists can only hurt people and send them back out into society worse off than they were before. The only argument for it is to insist it is justified for doing so, by inventing a dynamic where “they,” strangers placed into prison, ALL present a danger to “us,” the “people on the street,” that they either cannot be fixed or we should not bother, and that whatever they get, they deserve. Maybe you can convince someone that’s true for a convicted rapist, but I think you’d have a harder time when it comes to victims of addiction, poverty, and/or an imperfect justice system.

Not directed exclusively at me, but I had a math teacher throw a temper tantrum directed at a classroom of 4th graders about how much of a personal injustice it was to her that our parents kept sending her complaints, and that has got to be the worst thing she did.

To give you a picture as to why she might’ve been getting so many, when my Mom sent in one of these “complaints,” she received a response in the form of a metaphor about how coal must be put under immense pressure in order to become a diamond… I think my Mom responded that something like a flower might serve as a better metaphor for a fucking 9 year old, though I doubt it did much to change that jerk’s mind.

Anyway, having her as an instructor set me back at least a year in math, and I’ve had other people who were in that class say that that’s where their issues with anxiety started.

If that’s you’re reasoning, why even bother locking them up? Why not argue to execute all criminals, if your only desire is too keep all those dangerous convicts out of society for as long as possible?