> Where do you draw that line though? Are you really okay with committing people, i.e. imprisoning [...] people, because society seems to find those people inconvenient?

Well, that's what prison is, for some value of "inconvenient".

The problem is that at some point, if someone refuses to abide by laws/social norms, and can't be coerced via fines, etc., then the only options the state, and society has are either imprisonment, or allowing those people to ignore laws/social norms. Clearly some social norms (e.g. serious crimes) we aren't okay with ignoring, so it's really just a question of what the threshold is where we do something vs. allowing people to disregard said laws/norms.

> Personally I've never understood any justification for committing a person without their consent. The line between being committed and being extra judicially imprisoned seems indistinguishable to me.

Presumably the process to commit someone can involve the judiciary, so it wouldn't be extra-judicial.

Prison isn't for people that society finds inconvenient and, if on a jury, I hope you don't view it that way.

Prison is for those convicted of a crime by a jury of their peers. There must not only be a criminal law on the books, you must be found guilt by trial.

Involuntary committal involves no laws being broken and there is no jury. I don't know every detail of that process though I am familiar with the general flow, I know multiple people that work in related roles, and my understanding from them is that it is generally not down through a legal proceeding.

Juries are a just an implementation detail of the justice system used by Britain and some of its former colonies.

I'm talking at a higher level - I'm saying that conceptually, "inconvenience" ranges from mild offences to murder, and society has to decide where to draw some line for inconveniences that it will not permit. If someone is determined to re-offend, regardless of severity, the state's only choices are to either let them re-offend, or to use force to prevent it.

In the earlier discussion of involuntary commitment, there is often little or no judicial process offered at all. Its more akin to extra judicial detention than a criminal case.

Part of the surge of mass incarceration was that people who would have been hospitalized in an earlier time now get warehoused in a place that isn’t equipped to treat them.

What scares me about deinstitutionalization is that there are ways that people can ‘exit’ as in: move to the suburbs, drive instead of take public transportation, order a private taxi for your burrito instead of go to a restaurant. If public spaces can’t protect themselves we’ll have nothing but private spaces.

> Part of the surge of mass incarceration was that people who would have been hospitalized in an earlier time now get warehoused in a place that isn’t equipped to treat them.

Puts a different spin on the System of a Down lyrics, "The percentage of Americans in the prison system (prison system) has doubled since 1985" (Prison Song, Toxicity, 2001).

This further reinforces the other complaints (in the song) about drug offences landing people in jail, some of them from self-medicating a mental illness they can't or won't get treatment for

Those mental institutions weren’t equipped to treat them either. They were just awful places full of abuse and other cruelty.

There may be a better option, but the status quo of closing our eyes and waiting for them to physically harm someone isn’t just either.