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0 pointscrusso12y ago0 comments

because it was cruel and ineffective

As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working out for ya?"

It was a classic case of people wanting to be litigious or do-gooders and making the situation much worse than it already was rather than accepting the best option that was available.

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sliverstorm12y ago

From what I know of the time, it wasn't just an imperfect system, it was an imperfect system with rampant opportunities for abuse.

Have you ever read about the Magdalene Asylums?

To my knowledge it wasn't the less-than-perfect parts of institutionalization that caused us to get rid of them, it was the abuse of aspects of those systems that caused us to abandon them, and thus it is the abuse of those systems to which we should probably compare our current solution.

One possible missed opportunity of course- institutionalization has been marked, and may never be seriously considered again. Yet it's possible with sufficient oversight it could be a useful system.

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