In March, Bill Gene Hobbs walked out of Atascadero State Hospital in California, paroled into society despite strong warnings from mental health professionals. Hobbs didn’t just randomly end up back on the streets of San Francisco. He took a long, winding route through jail, prison, and finally the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with bipolar disorder with psychotic features. In plain language, that means episodes of racing thoughts, poor impulse control, grandiose ideas, and manic, hypersexual behavior.
That happens to match what police and victims reported for years as Hobbs grabbed, groped, kissed, and chased more than a dozen women across the city – crimes that earned him more than five years behind bars before the hospital stint even began – only to do it again after being released.
Criminal Mental Health Patients Released into Society
Because of his mental health and criminal history, the state labeled him an “Offender with a Mental Health Disorder,” a classification California uses when people are so unstable that the law can require them to serve parole inside a mental hospital instead of walking free. But the system works by checklist. Six boxes must be checked, and if even one is questionable, they have to be released. One of those boxes – the big one – is whether they are a “substantial danger of physical harm to others.”
When Hobbs challenged his classification in court, three psychologists testified. Two said, unequivocally, that he was dangerous. Hobbs put his hands on victims, restrained them, refused medication, and had a history of ignoring supervision rules. The third, Dr. Roxanne Rassti, took a narrowly legal view. She agreed he terrified women and caused serious emotional harm, but she said the law’s phrase “physical harm” should mean literal physical injury. Since no medical record showed broken bones or bruises, she believed he didn’t meet that threshold.
Judge Barry LaBarbera found that interpretation the most persuasive, saying he wasn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Hobbs checked all six legal boxes and ordered the man’s release. He pointed to Hobbs’ newfound willingness to take medication for his mental health issues and attend classes, ending with the faintly promising remark, “Hopefully, he is telling us the truth, and he will take his medication,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But hope was fleeting. Just months later, reporters saw Hobbs back in San Francisco, agitated and harassing women again, eerily similar to the behavior that got him arrested in the first place. He was picked up on parole violations soon after, and the whole episode exposed how California’s vague definition of “physical harm” and its rigid all-or-nothing system can force judges to release people who are, by almost every clinical measure, still unstable and unsafe.
Hobbs’ case has exposed deep structural problems in how California releases — or rather lets slip — individuals with severe mental illness and violent pasts. A system designed to protect the public, it seems, can also expose it to danger.
The system has a lot of cracks. Once people are released, parole officers can ask them to stay in treatment or take medication, but they can’t force them. It’s basically the honor system, which seems to work for returning library books, not so much for managing untreated psychosis.
And here’s where things get even more uncomfortable. California’s hospitals aren’t built to catch the people falling through the cracks. Many of the psychiatric inistitutions the state relies on — especially the for-profit ones — have long records of understaffing, dangerous conditions, and frequent safety violations. College Hospital in Cerritos, for example, was cited for holding patients face-down in restraints for hours, even though federal regulators warn this can cause suffocation.
When facilities like this struggle to keep patients safe inside their walls, it raises an awkward question: If the system can’t stabilize people in locked units, how confident should anyone feel when those same people walk out the door?
And California isn’t alone. Around the country, the same pattern shows up. Someone clearly unstable gets released because the law requires “immediate” or “physical” danger — and then something terrible happens everyone saw coming except the law.
One of the most famous examples is the death of New Yorker Kendra Webdale, who was pushed in front of a subway train by a man with schizophrenia who had cycled in and out of hospitals for years. Multiple providers had documented his violent behavior, but without a fresh, explicit threat, they couldn’t keep him. A psychiatrist later said he needed “intensive supervised care” that the system simply didn’t offer.
Colorado had a similar tragedy when Aurora theater shooter James Holmes was released from psychiatric care months before the attack. His psychiatrist even warned campus police he was dangerous, telling them Holmes had expressed homicidal thoughts and posed a danger to the public. But because he hadn’t made a specific, imminent threat, he couldn’t be placed on an involuntary hold.
Different states, different laws, but the same setup: a system that waits for someone to be dangerous in the most literal, immediate way and then acts shocked when the danger arrives right on schedule.
California’s version just adds a twist. Not only is it hard to keep someone in a hospital but also many of the hospitals aren’t providing meaningful treatment when patients do stay. Investigations show chronic understaffing, low spending on direct care, and hundreds of documented safety violations at some facilities. Yet regulators rarely impose major penalties or revoke licenses. With hospitals stretched thin and oversight even thinner, it’s no wonder the state ends up relying on hope rather than a concrete plan.
The whole system ends up running on phrases like “hopefully he’ll take his medication” or “hopefully he’ll stabilize,” or, as Judge LaBarbera said, “Hopefully, he is telling us the truth,” as if hope were a treatment plan.
But hope doesn’t check pill bottles or stop a manic spiral at 2 a.m. Laws that define “dangerous” as an immediate threat of physical harm ignore escalating behavior, terrified victims, and family warnings. The standard is so strict that even when people are plainly losing stability, the law says they still don’t count as dangerous. Case after case makes the same point: When hope is the only thing standing between untreated psychosis and the public, the public usually loses.
