LOS ANGELES — After disclosures of routine prisoner abuse by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — where jailers were found to break prisoners’ bones and sexually humiliate them — a settlement was announced Wednesday with the Justice Department in which the county will submit to sweeping reforms of its jail system, with the goals of improving the care of mentally ill inmates and curtailing abuse by deputies.

The settlement, which was presented in United States District Court, will impose court oversight on the nation’s largest jail system for at least a year, and it specifies a series of changes that must be made.

The action comes after a stunning series of problems in the jail system, which led to the indictment of more than a dozen Sheriff’s Department staff members. The previous sheriff, Lee Baca, who had long denied that there were major problems at the jails, resigned in early 2014 as allegations mounted that guards not only abused inmates but also obstructed a federal investigation.

Many of the changes set forth in the settlement are intended to reduce the risk of suicides at the jails, including additional steps to assess prisoners’ mental health, improve crisis intervention training for jail employees, have inmates spend more time out of their cells and enhance the investigation of all suicide attempts.