Oh! I see what you're doing with this thread, and I very much like where it is going.
This is tricky territory, however--because "committed" in the mental health sense could mean any of a thousand things. It could mean "compound similar to low-security prison, with substantial methods of self-improvement and friendly staff and a clear path to release", or it could mean "locked screaming in a 4x6 room, tased and forcibly injected with drugs every few hours, and with no human contact and never spoken to by staff". Historically, mental hospitals used to be HORRIBLE places, far worse than prisons. Today they're usually around the middle of that scale, which is terrifying when you consider what the endpoints of that scale are.
I support humane rehabilitation of mental health patients, giving them as much freedom as is possible, and not treating them like criminals unless they act like them. On the other hand, mental health patients who are likely to become violent -need- a closer eye on them, and that's different from punishing them. For violent mental health patients who cannot be rehabilitated, I support restricting their freedoms as much as necessary.
Sounds like what I'm saying is "You can't indefinitely confine terrorists, but you can indefinitely confine sex offenders". Let me clarify an important difference here. I see four main classes in play here:
- Sex offenders who show clear remorse and an ability to not re-offend. Let them go, maybe keep an eye on them for a while, keep their name on file in case something suspicious happens.
- Sex offenders who show limited or no control over their ability to re-offend due to mental health problems, and are still interested in or talk about committing crimes. Restrict their freedoms.
- Former "terrorists" who would have been considered POWs if they were wearing an army's colors, and probably chucked a grenade at US troops at the age of 14, and don't seem interested in fighting now. Let them go, maybe keep an eye on them for a while, keep their name on file in case something suspicious happens.
- Terrorists who openly talk about wanting to keep fighting, or who show enough mental instability that they are likely to cause physical harm to people. Restrict their freedoms.
The pattern here is "people who are criminally and dangerously unstable should be restricted in all cases, but a criminal instability should never be assumed of anyone, regardless of crime". If you charge someone with something that locks them up for life, okay, that's fine. But you have to charge them with something, and if that charge carries less than a life sentence, then you need to evaluate them at the end of it. ANYONE who's in prison, even if it's for driving off without paying for gas, who starts talking about terrorism or sex offenses is going to be looked at...if someone seems too bonkers to let go, then I trust medical judgments to lock them up if it's mental health reasons, AND I trust 'conspiracy' charges to lock them up if it's criminal reasons.