when i gently suggested that perhaps rigorously enforced new laws and overcrowded asylums and prisons might also have something to do with it , he sidestepped the issue by explaining that now there were very few vocational asylums for the mentally ill ; now such people were not locked up but were allowed , with minimal supervision by trained personnel , to spend most of their days out in the fields , doing simple but necessary work for the benefit of the country and the improvement of their own health .