Experiences like this compel me to advocate for structural change.
Systems should not leave people in crisis without care.
Across New Zealand, communities are debating homelessness, mental health crises and public safety in town centres.
The deeper question is not whether deinstitutionalisation was justified, but whether the community infrastructure meant to replace psychiatric institutions was ever built at scale.
Working between experience and policy, the consequences become clear.
Who turns up? Who disengages? And who disappears?
The real question is not ideological but infrastructural.
Whether we build systems capable of stabilising people before crisis escalates into enforcement, or continue leaving police and prisons to absorb the failure.
In New Zealand, the shift from large psychiatric institutions to community care began in the 1960s and accelerated through the 1990s.
Institutions closed for legitimate human rights reasons, but replacement infrastructure was never built at scale despite decades of work by community providers.
Containment did not disappear; it moved.
Increasingly, it sits in police cells and prison units, holding people whose primary needs are clinical rather than custodial.
Deinstitutionalisation is not the sole driver of crisis.
Housing inflation, reduced state housing, welfare restructuring, poverty and methamphetamine have compounded vulnerability.
With hospital capacity limited, many people with mental health conditions now end up in prison, where some access their only bed and regular meals.
A Corrections report in 2016 found more than 90% of prisoners have had a lifetime diagnosis of a mental health or substance use disorder.
In practice, Corrections now manages more people with these conditions than any other agency.
Until recently, police received a mental health call every seven minutes and effectively operated as the country’s default mental health service.
In late 2024, they began withdrawing from that role, shifting responsibility to crisis services under pressure.
Some mental health practitioners report increased caution around high-risk interventions because of liability concerns.
In Whanganui, many of the people most visible in our CBD cycle between emergency housing, hospital presentations and police contact remain close to services they rely on.
Those responding to crisis are caught in the same pattern: responding, relocating and revisiting harm rather than resolving it.
It’s a frustration for communities and frontline staff working within constraints they did not design.
Move-on orders manage visibility rather than vulnerability.
They create a bridge between homelessness and criminalisation, with breaches potentially resulting in fines or imprisonment.
Rather than resolving instability, they displace it.
This displacement carries significant public cost.
Corrections’ 2024/25 annual report estimates a prison bed at about $552 per day, meaning a 90-day sentence costs nearly $50,000, substantially more than supported housing.
Underfunding stabilisation shifts care costs into expensive containment.
The current system produces a triple bill.
Housing failure, police call-outs and prison custody, with more than half reconvicted within two years.
This fragmentation creates an accountability gap.
Systems measure compliance within silos rather than whether people stabilise through sustained housing, reduced police contact, fewer remand entries and mental health crises.
New Zealand closed psychiatric hospitals – but without adequate community infrastructure, we risk rebuilding them inside prisons.
Some argue that individuals must take responsibility, and that homelessness or addiction cannot be explained only by systemic failures.
Public safety matters. Violence, intimidation and antisocial behaviour require clear boundaries and enforcement.
But safety must apply to everyone, including people experiencing mental distress, addiction, disability or crisis.
Enforcement systems are designed around compliance rather than trauma-informed care.
People often disengage not because they refuse help but because prior engagement felt unsafe, making withdrawal a form of self-protection and highlighting why trust-based responses matter.
Not everyone will engage immediately, and some will still require enforcement.
Reducing visible harm depends on increasing the number of people who stabilise – not assuming universal refusal.
Repeated low-level convictions accumulate, reinforcing a pattern of criminalisation that shapes how people are perceived across agencies and may deepen the care-to-prison pipeline the Royal Commission warned about.
Official data suggests declining emergency housing numbers.
But tighter eligibility has increased rejections, while community providers report rising homelessness.
I regularly see people trying to survive on benefits that no longer cover rent and food costs – a reality shared across the country.
Too often, we treat predictable instability as a public-order problem rather than an economic one and pay for the crisis through police call-outs and prison beds instead of preventing it upstream.
Dedicated mental health units are being built inside prisons, including the 100-bed Hikitia unit at Waikeria, a pattern known as transinstitutionalisation.
Research shows supported housing approaches end homelessness for most participants while reducing hospitalisations, criminal charges and police interactions.
Where stable, low-barrier accommodation has been provided locally, visible disorder has often reduced because people have somewhere safe to be, and engagement with support services improves.
We must fund community-led crisis accommodation as core public safety infrastructure – with integrated mental health, addiction and housing support and shared cross-agency accountability for stabilisation.
Fines and low-level criminal convictions can create barriers to housing and employment, reinforcing the cycle of instability they are meant to resolve.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care warned of pathways from care to prison and called for stable housing as part of healing.
The 2025 Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill introduces a presumption against financial redress for survivors convicted of serious offences.
Stability begins with simple conditions: rest, safety and belonging.
Without them, recovery is almost impossible.
If we want safer town centres and fewer people in crisis, those conditions must be built into the systems we fund so that the next person in distress is met with real care.
