L.A. District Attorney Jackie Lacey called it “Groundhog Day” when she took “America Tonight” on the first-ever TV tour of the jail’s psychiatric ward.

“How you doin’, Ms. Lacey?” said one inmate, crouched on his knees and yelling through a slit in the door. “A petty theft, and they still got me in here … I’m on 800 milligrams of Seroquel. I’m diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, yet other people mostly bipolar. I need help, and they can’t offer me help.”

Lacey nodded in agreement. “If he were not mentally ill, he would be in court. He would have pleaded guilty. He would already be going about his business,” she said. But because he’s mentally ill, she added, “this is the only option.”

The county realizes the need for change. Lacey heads up a new task force to improve the way the mentally ill are treated in jail and to divert low-level offenders from jail in the first place. A prosecutor for 30 years, she now wants to free people who don’t belong behind bars, even if her office put them there.

“Have we contributed to it? Sure, in some sense,” Lacey said. “But I am determined that we are going to lead this cause. My dream is that we’ll be able to close down some wings of the jail.”