Here in Iowa we have an Ed Thomas bill, named after a football coach from a small town who was shot and killed by a young man who is, if I remember right, schizophrenic. There are undoubtedly stipulations in this law that I'm not clear on, but what I understand is that it's basically designed to prevent individuals who are already committed to a hospital (or, I suppose, other institution) and that show signs of homicidal ideation or violent instability from being released without contact with the police in whatever county they are coming from/going to. In a lot of ways I can see the sense in this procedure, though it depends on open and thorough communication across multiple services, which isn't always happening. That, and I'm not totally clear on who gets "flagged" in the system; that is to say, what makes a certain person a mandatory target for reporting in this manner.

Also I'm not exactly sure to what extent this will prevent violent crime by mentally ill persons. If they become institutionalized, then sure, that's a great measure toward prevention, but they will need to have been caught up in the system already to make that possible, i.e. done something violent or expressed sufficient intention to do so.

What we consider "mentally ill" and "mental health care" is a very, very grey and slippery slope. Most people with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia are not violent, and when they are it is almost certainly more self-directed -- I can only assume the ratio of violent crimes by schizophrenics versus suicides by schizophrenics would be telling on that point, but I could be wrong. On the other hand, some kid gets fucked up on bath salts for a weekend and starts packing around a shotgun to ward off the little people he's been seeing, and he ends up on a psych ward for detox and evaluation, and maybe he ends up being a state case, funded by the county, whatever. I don't exactly call that viable mental health care at work. Many people who ought to simply go to jail and stay there end up at the hospital because they simply know how to say the right things or have a psych diagnosis for whatever reason. And the prescribed treatments for people ending up an inpatient rather than an inmate is often dubious and inconsistent.

I don't know that I have a point exactly, just ruminating. I'm not sure I greatly understand to what extent social services are responsible for observing the mentally ill, but if somebody is admitted to a hospital expressing (or suspected of) violent intention, it seems that some outpatient followup service or an inter-disciplinary communication would raise a flag if that individual started, say, stockpiling weapons. Who's to say who should be watched and who shouldn't, though? Those services take money, and it usually seems like a kind of back-pedaling, trying to appease families of victims with legislation designed for "prevention" of things that already happened. The Ed Thomas bill is an interesting intervention, though too new to see what effect it might have on mental health care in this state.

More in response to your post, I'm not sure that a change in mental health care tactics is going to effectively prevent this sort of tragedy. A person who is sociopathic is not likely to seek treatment on their own, and they will need to attract sufficient suspicion to end up with a mental health commitment -- we might just as well assume the method of attracting this attention would be through the perpetration of crime. A proposed "stigma" on mental health issues is really kind of a moot point in this case.