Mental health spending nets return by reducing jail population

And treating people with mental health problems rather than putting them in jail is obviously the moral thing to do.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/osu-mhs110216.php

Public Release: 2-Nov-2016
Mental health spending nets return by reducing jail population
Oregon State University

Each dollar a state spends on mental health care cuts roughly 25 cents off its jail expenditures by reducing its inmate population, a new study shows.

The findings, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest that 35 of the 44 states analyzed could reduce jail populations by spending more on public inpatient mental health care while maintaining their current level of community mental health care. The U.S. average cost for housing a jail inmate is $60 a day.

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People with mental illness make up a significant portion of jail populations, and many of those inmates could be safely supervised and more effectively treated somewhere other than jail. Effects of the treatment could include being less likely to behave in a way that results in being jailed.

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