I'm not saying that they shouldn't be sentenced and held in treatment facilities if convicted, including and up to life without parole, just that they shouldn't be put in prison because our prison system is so tone deaf to the needs of the mentally ill; they don't treat them, and then they stick them in solitary and otherwise abuse them when they act up. There's been a number of stories regarding the brutality of US prisons to the mentally ill, such as an ASD sufferer doing years of solitary confinement in Virginia, or the debacle over the extradition of Gary McKinnon, which the UK Home Office called off when the details of US prisons hit the British press, as well as the medical opinion that he'd probably kill himself once in.

I suppose I'm saying our prison system needs reforming anyway, but taking the mentally ill out of the current system is a damned fine start.