To the editor,
Re: B.C. cities protest ‘prolific offenders’ with hundreds of arrests, April 26.
A recently released letter from the British Columbian Urban Mayors’ Caucus gives the impression that municipal policing in the province has gone to hell in a handbasket. The big-city mayors reported on the subject of repeat offenders; the numbers tabulated are staggering, but not really surprising to anyone who keeps up with daily news events. One repeat offender had generated 248 police incidents in a two-year period on Vancouver Island. He’s only one of those who the mayors referred to as chronic offenders who are involved in a ridiculous catch-and-release-hide-and-seek shell game, all suffering from drug addiction or mental illness, and usually both. This terrible situation is in every community in British Columbia, in all Canadian provinces, and across just about every country world-wide to varying degrees.
Those of a certain vintage can remember the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s when there were detailed media reports from mental health institutions in several countries regarding mistreatment of inmates. Eventually just about all isolated institutions were closed and patients were to be treated in their own communities; either at home, halfway houses, clinics or hospitals. It became known as deinstitutionalization, and was implemented around the world by pandering politicians and well-meaning experts who were themselves suffering from highly inflamed imaginations.
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Tragically, it created even more problems with a huge amount of people resorting to self-medication and falling through the bureaucratic cracks. A direct result of those decisions all those decades ago can be seen in the homeless populations in downtown areas of cities worldwide, and in horrendous numbers of recidivism reported by the urban mayors’ caucus.
There used to be a saying that the inmates are running the asylum, but even with no asylums these days, those who should be inmates are still in charge.
Bernie Smith, Parksville
READ ALSO: Nanaimo mayor wants B.C. to institutionalize severely mental ill people who are homeless
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