About 2,300 prison inmates in South Carolina have a mental illness, but the entire prison system has only 31/2 psychiatric staff positions. That's an appalling gap in treatment capability.

A plan to provide mental health care via two-way TV may help, but it should be a stopgap measure only. There's no substitute for face-to-face counseling. State lawmakers have to take greater responsibility for a prison system that has suffered from neglect for far too long.

A telemedicine project will begin this fall at Perry Correctional Institution and may expand to other prisons in the system. Telemedicine for mental health has proven useful in some rural areas of the nation that have few or no counselors nearby. But mental health advocates say the effectiveness of such programs is limited.

The telemedicine program comes a year after three inmates and an advocacy group filed suit against the prison system, alleging the state had failed to adequately treat mentally ill inmates. About 10 percent of the prison system's 23,000 inmates are mentally ill, with illnesses ranging from anxieties to psychosis requiring hospitalization.

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The telemedicine program is needed in a system that spends among the least in the nation on health care for inmates. But it should eventually be replaced with more effective face-to-face treatment.

In the past, it has been easy for state lawmakers to ignore prison inmates, a politically unpopular and largely powerless group. But a reality is that 90 percent of inmates eventually will be released into our communities. It's in the interest of public safety to make sure inmates get the health care and job skills they need to adjust to the outside world and become productive citizens.