Julie Small

There have been more than two dozen San Diego County jail suicides between 2010 and 2015, well above average. The suicides highlight a national problem: the increasing number of mentally ill people landing in jails.

“We were really struck by the fact that people were incredibly acute in their need,” a disability rights attorney said after touring Sonoma County's main jail. “Higher than we’ve seen in units that are licensed designated hospital units. Something was wrong here.”

California’s jails were built to hold inmates for relatively short sentences — usually just a few months. But now local law enforcement is grappling with how to hold offenders for long periods of time, which is having an impact on mentally ill inmates.

<p>Julie Small's in-depth investigation of dangerously poor health care in California's prisons finds some progress after a lawsuit put prison health in the hands of a federal receiver, but much more needs to be done.</p>

<p>The state Inspector General’s Office will issue a report on the quality of prison medical care in California by the end of the year. It’ll include a summary of inspections at 11 state prisons. The report will help a federal judge determine when to return control of prison medical care to the state. KPCC’s Julie Small has looked over some of the preliminary scores.</p>

<p>Two years ago, poor medical care in state prisons accounted for about one inmate death each week. A federal judge took over and the state terminated about 60 substandard physicians. That's left many prisons without enough doctors, but not the Calipatria prison about 100 miles east of San Diego. KPCC's Julie Small reports on one doctor who's quickly building the staff.</p>