re: I'm all on board for a penal colony island.

Absalom.

Maybe the reservations could be incentivized to take them. They can set their own rules on res territory. Just thinking a little outside the box.

Just to build out this thought:

They need $ and they have lots of empty space.
They have flexibility with their laws related to drug use.
Pay the tribe per head to provide some level of housing and policing.
People living on the street could move there voluntarily, or it could be an option other than prison.

You bigot, you haven't even addressed the plight of the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ people

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Hey, it could work out for them. Australia has had a good run.

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The problem is wherever they go, there they are.

I know our exchange isn't serious, but the whole premise of this thread is upsetting. Americans have been socialized to view people accused of crimes (who lack celebrity and/or wealth and/or beauty) as subhuman. A lot of these people are mentally ill or are drug addicts (or both). Anyone who knows anything about addiction knows that addiction generally stems from trauma. Instead treating these people, we warehouse them and then throw our hands up claiming we've tried everything when they reoffend.

I was driving home from picking the baby up from daycare yesterday on road that hugs the perimeter of Bayou Saint John when I saw a guy I know from work riding in a go-cart on that same road. He's young. Maybe 24 now. He experienced a psychotic break and committed some crimes. He has schizophrenia and some other cognitive things going on. I feel like my 6-year-old is more in tune with reality than he is, but he's a very sweet kid. He was able to get into a group home and they make sure he takes his medicines. He has a job now and just enjoys his little life riding his go-cart along the bayou on sunny days. Before he got into the group home, someone had posted a video of him hanging out in their backyard (uninvited obv) on NextDoor. If not for the group home, I'm sure he'd end up back in jail and potentially on this colony.

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Addiction is separate from mental illness.

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Not always. Untreated mentally ill people frequently self-medicate which results in addiction.

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and we cannot excuse criminal behavior such as robbery and theft due to addiction.

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I agree that it should not be excused.

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Would be interesting to see the medication history of this guy. Many, many medications our doctors give can lead to schizophrenia-like symptoms. As long as pharma makes money, nobody seems to care.

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This is a good point. I'm pretty sure it's genetic in this case, though. He told me about his older brother who "went to a party and someone slipped something in his drink and he's never been right since." Mental illness is super stigmatized in the Black community so I hear this explanation, or variations of it, pretty regularly. His mother doesn't sound very stable, either.

Another layer adding to the overmedication of kids (especially poor black/brown kids) is that parents are incentivized to get their kids diagnoses. Low-income parents get checks for their kids if they have certain mental or behavioral conditions.

The weak judges don’t even use the “3 strikes and you get life” rule…..

That is all we really need…….