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The 8-2 approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee came after Kevin Daily of the Tucson Crime Free Coalition said area residents and businesses are beset by people who are stealing, bathing on front lawns and having sex in public. “Our members are suffering,’’ he said.

Daily said one potential solution would be longer involuntary commitment, which he said could help break the cycle of addiction he believes is behind a lot of the problem.

The question for lawmakers was how long the state should be allowed to hold someone for substance abuse disorder.

Dr. Marjorie Balfour, a Tucson psychiatrist, told them there was an effort last year to allow someone to be held for a full year. “The science doesn’t support that,’’ she said, and the bill went nowhere.

Balfour said people already picked up by law enforcement under existing public health laws, for being at risk of harming themselves or others, are brought to the Crisis Response Center in Tucson, which is run by her employer, Connections Health Solutions.

That results in an evaluation to determine whether the person’s problem is due to mental health or substance abuse.

“But under our current statute, after that first 24 hours, if it seems like the behavior is driven mostly by substance abuse, which in this case is primarily meth, if they don’t want to stay then we have to discharge them back out to the street, even if they’re still impaired,’’ she said.

Senate Bill 1257 is different.

Balfour said it would allow a crisis center to keep someone for up to five days to allow whatever they are taking to clear from their system, “give us time to engage with them with peer support, try to enhance their motivation for treatment, so hopefully they would accept involuntary treatment.’’

Sylvia Lee, a former Pima County supervisor, said the change makes sense.

She pointed out that at one time, the policy was to lock up people believed to be suffering from mental health problems for long periods of time. That changed, she said, “as the pendulum swung way over here’’ as states were ordered to stop warehousing people.

Lee called SB 1257 “one tool to put it back in the middle.’’

While the proposal is motivated by problems in Pima County, the change would have statewide effect, allowing five-day evaluations anywhere in Arizona.

Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea.

“I really empathize with everything everyone’s been saying about helping people get more treatment,’’ testified lobbyist Jeanne Woodbury. And she told lawmakers she understands the issue, being “a sober person in recovery.’’

But Woodbury said her clients, the Arizona Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the latter an association of criminal defense lawyers, believe that locking people up for a longer period of time without their consent is not a solution.

At least part of the problem, she said, is that some of those caught up by this may be mentally ill. Locking them up solely because of that, Woodbury said, could run afoul of a settlement of a decades-long lawsuit, which prohibits the state from locking people up without plans and funding for actually helping them.

“So this is something where we’re going to be putting the state in a very difficult position, legally and financially, and potentially putting people in a revolving door of five- to 10-day periods of evaluation and commitment where forced detox does not really lead to long-term recovery,’’ Woodbury said.

She got an argument from Sen. Vince Leach, the sponsor of SB 1257.

“Is your degree in psychiatry, in treating patients like this?’’ he asked.

Woodbury acknowledged her degree is in mathematics. But she said she was representing the views of her clients “and using their expertise.’’

Leach responded that the current situation is unacceptable.

“Right now, we’re in a two-day revolving door,’’ said Leach, a Republican who lives in southern Pinal County but whose district includes parts of Tucson. “Is that trying to fix people?’’

“Neither of these are good solutions to help people,’’ Woodbury responded.

But Woodbury said locking people up for five days has ripple effects and can affect whether individuals can hang onto their housing and their jobs, losses that “can be much more destabilizing.’’

That answer did not satisfy Leach.

“We’ve got businessmen that are spending $1,500 like, monthly, fixing doors to their businesses,’’ he asked. “What is the ACLU solution?’’

Woodbury said her purpose in testifying was to point out flaws in the measure. That drew an angry reaction from Leach.

“I would ask that he answer the question and not what he’s here for,’’ the senator said.

Woodbury said the problems are more complex.

“I think that at the root of a lot of these issues is poverty,’’ she said. “We need more solutions to make sure people have housing and access to health care so that it is easier for them to maintain voluntary treatment. From my own experiences in residential care, one of the most difficult things for people to actually maintain recovery is that they cannot afford to be in treatment for long enough without losing their housing and employment.’’

Leach told his colleagues they should ignore all that.

“A majority of these people are on the street,’’ he said. “This is not a residential problem.’’

The measure now needs Senate approval.