Ever since New York State was ordered to stop keeping prisoners in solitary confinement if they had serious mental illness, there has been a mysterious trend to diagnose prisoners with mild mental illness instead. At least one seriously ill prisoner was driven to suicide by solitary confinement.

I have no easy answer for what to do with people like Amir Hall. However, any solution probably involves spending more money. If we end the war on drugs, and free lots of prisoners that shouldn't have been imprisoned in the first place, we could afford to care properly for those that we do need to imprison.