I have such a hard time writing short, but this editorial, from the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal, really shows you how it's done:

Jail time is no solution to mental illness

Imprisoning the afflicted only perpetuates the cycle

The Marion County Correctional Facility is supposed to be a jail, not a mental hospital. But many of its inmates are there in part because of mental illness.

They can't afford private mental health care or won't accept what little public assistance is available. And they wind up in jail because they commit crimes.

Chris Hoy, Marion County's jail commander, can't say for sure how many of the 19,000 inmates jailed yearly have mental illnesses -- he guesses about one inmate in three. His small staff can only evaluate the "worst of the worst," he says. Psychotropic medications to treat the inmates cost taxpayers thousands of dollars each week.

Marion County's situation is not unique. In a guest opinion in Friday's Statesman Journal, Bob Nikkel of the Oregon Department of Human Services described the need for better funding of community-based mental programs.

By financing more programs, the state could help Marion -- and other counties -- break the cycle that lands so many mentally ill in jail or prison.

Hoy says the cycle starts when a mentally ill person has a crisis and does something that alarms people -- trespassing, taking off his clothes, stealing something. People call the police.

Police have no information on the person's history and no meaningful alternatives. So they arrest the person and take him to jail. Once the person is in jail, his Oregon Health Plan coverage stops. He's housed with criminals. The jail isn't equipped to treat his mental illness. If he agrees to take medication, fine; if not, he won't be forced to do so. Either way, it's likely someone else -- possibly a criminal -- will have to be released to make room for him.

Eventually the person gets released, often after serving more time than a person without mental illness arrested for the same offense. Without the Oregon Health Plan, he has no medication. Getting a community mental health appointment can take weeks.

While he waits for that appointment and the needed medications, the person has another crisis -- the police are called ... And on it goes.

That cycle doesn't serve taxpayers, police or people with mental illness. It's time to stop it by providing more mental health care in the community.