Lisa Pickoff-White

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.