PORTLAND – An increasing number of mentally ill Mainers are filling the county jails after committing petty crimes.

“It’s a crisis,” said Kennebec County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Raymond Wells. “Jails have become the new state hospitals.”

Previously, many offenders suffering from depression, paranoia, schizophrenia and other disorders were treated in state hospitals. But during the 1990s, the state scaled back the size of those institutions.

Since then, more mentally ill offenders have been winding up in jails across the state. Maine jails and prisons have two or three times as many mentally ill inmates as the national average.

About a quarter of all prison and jail inmates in Maine are receiving treatment for mental illness, one of the highest proportions in the country. Nationally, the proportion is about 10 percent.

Cumberland County Jail estimates that 35 percent of its inmates receive treatment for mental illness.

“It’s a really sad situation,” said Eleanor Grover, who works in the Lincoln County Jail helping inmates suffering from drug and alcohol abuse. “We can’t give these inmates the help they need to treat their illnesses. Sometimes, they’ll scream all night.”

Many of the inmates are jailed after committing petty crimes such as trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace when they’re off their medications and acting irrationally, said Carolyn Carothers, director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Maine.

Police arrest them to get them off the street and help calm them down.

Once they’re in jail, some of the inmates attempt suicide after searching for sharp tools to slash their arms or hang themselves with sheets, blankets or clothing.

Some suicidal inmates are transferred to observation or medical cells, where they are given blue paper outfits and thick, suicideproof blankets, and guards can watch them around the clock.

Inmates who continue to rage, cry and smash their skulls against cement walls are taken to restraint chairs and tied up. Sagadahoc is the only county whose jail does not have a restraint chair.

Jailers sometimes try to get inmates temporarily transferred and stabilized at a state mental hospital or the Supermax, the state’s secure prison lockup in Warren.

But most of the time, the state’s two mental health hospitals say they don’t have any empty beds. And judges send inmates with only extreme behavior problems to the Supermax.

“We’re beyond frustrated and angry,” said Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Capt. John Lebel.

“This summer we had a guy here for 40 days. He was suicidal, banging his head against the wall, ripping the stitches out of his wrist. When we put him in the restraint chair, he’d bite the inside of his mouth and spit blood at everybody.”