The real root problem is that we refuse to pay to treat any of the actual root causes of any of this, whether that is on the street or in a jail cell.
The health system has a shortage of mental health and drug treatment spaces and practitioners, and what exists often isn't affordable to those who need it. At the same time, we don't pay for those things in prison either, and it's also expensive to have a bunch of disruptive, unhinged prisoners constantly needing to be contained after damaging stuff when they have an episode or whatever.
Bail and sentencing reform was often kicked off by conservatives initially, because a low-tax state cannot afford the very expensive cost of locking up every single drug user. California has been sued multiple times over the fact that its prison system is chronically overcrowded, and lost at the Supreme Court level: https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/crim/overcrowding_080511.asp.... But there is no appetite to pay more to open new prisons, which are nearly impossible to site even if there was funding (do you want to live next to a prison?)
The health system has a shortage of mental health and drug treatment spaces and practitioners, and what exists often isn't affordable to those who need it. At the same time, we don't pay for those things in prison either, and it's also expensive to have a bunch of disruptive, unhinged prisoners constantly needing to be contained after damaging stuff when they have an episode or whatever.
Bail and sentencing reform was often kicked off by conservatives initially, because a low-tax state cannot afford the very expensive cost of locking up every single drug user. California has been sued multiple times over the fact that its prison system is chronically overcrowded, and lost at the Supreme Court level: https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/crim/overcrowding_080511.asp.... But there is no appetite to pay more to open new prisons, which are nearly impossible to site even if there was funding (do you want to live next to a prison?)