A pilot program to better address the needs of the mentally ill at Twin Towers Correctional Facility would be expanded to all 700 such inmates in county jails under Los Angeles County’s proposed budget.

The county’s 2015-16 budget proposal unveiled Monday includes $99 million in additional funds for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails. About $45 million would be used to expand the pilot program, which encourages more interaction between mentally ill inmates and sheriff’s staff.

“It’s not about putting them in a cell,” Custody Assistant Sheriff Terri McDonald said Tuesday during a tour of Twin Towers. “It’s about engaging them in a constitutional way.”

The remainder would go toward deputy training, inmate diversion programs and hiring an additional 250 deputies and other staff.

The budget was formally presented Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors and will undergo several hearings and deliberations until a final budget is adopted by the board before the start of the fiscal year on July 1.

The pilot program, called “high observation” housing, was the result of mandates from the U.S. Department of Justice under a memorandum of understanding to address mental health needs and suicide prevention for inmates, lawsuits involving excessive use of force by sheriff’s deputies and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

About 20 percent of the jail’s population has a diagnosed mental illness, McDonald said.

Under the pilot program, which included about 100 inmates, one large outdoor recreational space was divided by fencing, creating individual spaces that allowed inmates more opportunities to get fresh air while also interacting with other inmates. On Tuesday afternoon about seven inmates were in the individual cages. One man was sitting on a bench holding a basketball, another was slowly walking around the space.

Inside the facility, a clinician met one-on-one with an inmate in a common area inside a cell pod, while several inmates sat nearby at metal tables, some reading magazines. A couple of men pounded on the table.

McDonald said the goal is to interact with mentally ill inmates rather than leaving them isolated in their cells, which may lead to suicide attempts.

“We don’t want somebody in worse shape than they were when they came in here because they’ve been isolated,” McDonald said.

She said expanding the program requires additional deputies, clinicians, custody assistants, nurses and supervisors.

Under the new funding, all jail deputies and recruits coming out of the academy would receive 40 hours of training aimed at improving deputies’ interactions with mentally ill inmates.

Beyond conducting security checks every 15 minutes on inmates in their cells, more staff is needed to bring the inmates out of their cells, to provide medication several times a day and to encourage inmates to attend court hearings so their cases move more quickly through the judicial system, McDonald said.

“It’s about people helping people,” she said.