PENSACOLA, FL - Escambia County Sheriff Ron McNesby is taking positive steps to limit future problems with mentally ill inmates at the jail.

But the problem is bigger than what is happening at the Escambia County Jail, and it needs a more comprehensive solution, both locally and at the state level.

Jail officials have found themselves at the end of a long and shameful process that too often depends on law enforcement to deal with mentally ill people. Asking local corrections officers to clean up society's failure to adequately deal with the mentally ill is not a sound solution.

Still, McNesby and jail officials have to deal with the problem because it has landed in their laps. They are entitled to complain about the situation and to seek relief -- but not to duck it.

McNesby has begun the process of dealing with it by:

· Having a psychiatrist on duty at the jail 40 hours a week, and on call the rest of the time.

· Having mental health professionals train a crisis intervention team to deal with troublesome mentally ill inmates, and an extraction team to remove them if necessary. This should help avoid problems caused by minimally trained corrections officers -- who are trained to deal with criminals -- having to handle mentally ill inmates.

· Limiting and controlling the use of a restraint chair, and requiring an evaluation of the inmate when the chair is used.

· Banning the use of Tasers on inmates known to be mentally ill.

Calls for banning the use of Tasers in the jail altogether are wrong. Jails are an inherently dangerous place, with inmates -- many of them hardened criminals -- far outnumbering corrections officers. McNesby is right when he says his responsibilities include the safety of corrections officers working inside the jail.

That is part and parcel with another of McNesby's responsibilities: maintaining control of the inmate population.

The worst law enforcement nightmare is a prison revolt; the results are always ugly, and too often are fatal.

In large part, jails are controlled by the inmates' sense of order -- their belief that corrections officers are in charge, and that they can, and will, maintain control.

Tasers are an effective deterrent for corrections officers but are much less dangerous than a firearm. They can make the difference between a short disturbance or one that gets out of control.

Tasers also can be abused by officers, something that cannot be allowed.

Ultimately, the jail needs either a separate facility or a dedicated wing for dealing with mentally ill inmates. This will cost the county both capital and operating funds. But as with the sheriff, this is a responsibility the county cannot duck. It might also help control jail overcrowding, another serious problem.

At the same time, the state has to reverse decades of neglect that have forced too many of our mentally ill citizens onto the streets or into the homes of family members unable to deal with them.

The end result of this serious, long-standing underfunding of Florida's mental health infrastructure is overcrowded jails along with law enforcement and corrections officers given a task they are ill-suited to handle.