We have state psychiatric hospitals already, I am in them more than probably most anyone else on the board, and they are prohibitively expensive to run. That money would be way better spent creating community level locked facilities. It’s a step down from a psychiatric hospital, but it can still be a secure facility. That was the promise of de-institutionalization, that a middle something would be created between purely outpatient care and a state psychiatric hospital. But the funding never materialized and it never happened.

Additionally, most all of the beds that used to be used at psychiatric hospitals for civil commitments are now filled with competency restoration patients. Ever state is having this issue, and legislatures are scrambling to try and figure out how to create more civil commitment beds.

It’s an expensive solution, and to this point, no state has effectively solved or funded it.