It's a crime to house the mentally ill this way  The crowded Los
Angeles County jail holds thousands who are mentally ill and
accused of a crime. Most have been there before.   The county
jail.  On Monday, the jail held 3,200 inmates diagnosed with a
mental illness and accused of a crime. Most have not been to
trial, many have waited months for their day in court, and the
majority have cycled through at least once before. There's no
longer enough room to house them all in segregated areas, so
1,000 mentally ill men and 300 women are housed with the general
population.  Sheriff Lee Baca has said for decades that he runs
the nation's largest mental hospital, but we've heard it so
often that the shock has worn off. We know there's something
inexcusably wrong with the system — something backward and
inhumane. But we shrug and move on, and the failure of public
policy persists, at great public expense, while Los Angeles
County officials order up another round of studies.  On the
seventh floor of the Twin Towers, s