Yup. Started in the fifties.* Continued under none other than the Original JFK (who served in the Pacific). He and Landslide Lyndon and a democrat controlled Congress got through The Community Mental Health Act and that got the ball rolling on deinstitutionalization.
* In the late fifties I got to see a state institution in person. I was very young and no allowed inside but it was still quite the experience to be on the grounds and hear the screams of tormented souls from within, to see the bars on the windows and the trustees working around the grounds. It made a lasting impression.
Zeit, both myself and my oldest son were born in the infirmary on CV Island out side the entrance to the Castle, the Federal prison for the worse of the worse Navy and Marines.
Summers as a teen we would pass the Castle either boating, fishing or even once I water skied past, my parents must have hated me, no life jacket. I allways waved back.
Memories of looking up at the stone walls perhaps 8 story's high, Bars on windows everywhere and in the summer the arms hanging out the windows that waved at us.
Years later I met a Marine that went to work in the Chaplin's office as a GS 4 perhaps. Ah the story's he told of live within the walls for both prisoners and the Marine guards, not to mention the Chaplin's themselves.
This was as he saw it not a prison but an asylum with no doctors of the non medical kind. Far as he saw it, all the prisoners needed inpatient care and not punishment as none would be there if they were of sound mind.
As he told me after a couple of years of being a guard the men of every type be it Chaplin's or any kind of staff began to get a bit unhinged themselves as the insanity kind of spreads to anyone that spends 8-10 hours a day 5-6 days a week around.
Became a cat and mouse game of the board prisoners who would think up ways to bedevil the guards. Some ways were extremely creative.
Fascinating the history of the Castle, Today it stands abandoned, Cannot be used for anything as the cleanup would become impossible. But there it still stands a testament to insanity and unspeakable horror.
Worked with a woman, Jewish, Russian that came here via Israel that her family some how were allowed to immigrate to. She told me that as a child she remembers, or was told about as a child, no Prisions in Russia, just Asylums as the criminals were considered mentally ill. Interesting out look from the times of the Cold War.
We can do as the Brits did to the Scots along time ago, take away any kind of weapon and reduce the people to only being able to own a 3-4 inch knife to cut meat or vegetables for a meal. History shows how well that worked.
