State lawmakers have set aside $5 million to plan and design a new 500-bed correctional facility on the Big Island, reopening an old debate on whether and where to build a new prison for Hawai'i's growing inmate population.

House Public Safety and Military Affairs Chairwoman Cindy Evans said the appropriation requires that treatment programs be offered at the new facility, but otherwise gives prison officials discretion to decide what sort of facility to build.

That means prison officials could opt for a relatively open, low-security facility for inmates who are nearing the ends of their sentences, or could construct a more traditional prison similar to the Halawa Correctional Facility, which is the state's largest prison.

The state now holds most of its prison inmates in privately run facilities in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and Mississippi because there is not enough room for them in Hawai'i prisons. About 2,100 prison inmates are now held out of state, and about 1,600 are held in state.

Prison officials have said they need transition beds for inmates who are returning from the Mainland prisons to provide programs and help those convicts prepare for their release back into the community.

Louise Kim McCoy, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said prison officials asked the Legislature for $1.5 million to begin developing transitional facilities statewide for the returning inmates, but lawmakers declined.

Instead, they set aside $5 million to plan and design the Big Island facility. McCoy said prison officials will study the Big Island plan, but said they warned lawmakers that there were problems with the idea.

It would be difficult to find qualified staff on the Big Island for drug treatment and other programs at a large new facility.

Evans said she envisions a minimum- to medium-security prison with an emphasis on inmates preparing for their release.

"We believe that it's time to talk about addressing that again because we've got need for more facilities," Evans said. "Even if we keep shipping them to the Mainland, what do you do in the last year or two of their time? Do you leave them on the Mainland, or do you bring them back home and work with them before they come back?

"We have to have a certain type of facility to bring them home to, kind of that last place they live before they go back into the community."

It is important convicts get help with that transition before being released "because they may be your next-door neighbor," Evans said. "How do we get them at least to where they're employable and they can start planning a future for themselves?"

Andy Levin, county executive director for Mayor Harry Kim, said Kim offered to develop a proposal for a new treatment facility on the Big Island for inmates from the county, but never got a response from the state prison system.

As an alternative to sending inmates out of state, Kim offered to develop a plan for a new facility for 400 to 500 "light- to medium-security inmates," Levin said. "It would focus on those inmates whose families and roots are on the Big Island, because he recognizes that (family and community ties) are so important for rehabilitation. The goal would be to develop programs that would assist and transition inmates back into society."

If the state were willing to seriously consider the idea, Kim offered to further develop the plan "to address the entire scope of what is needed to work with inmates from the time of their incarceration through their release, and he would make a point to have it focus on family and community involvement," Levin said.

He said Kim wanted to include job training and other programming, and proposed that the state pay the county the same amount it is paying private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America to house Hawai'i inmates out of state. The county would contract with private operators to deliver the job training and other services at the new facility, he said.

That proposal is on hold until a new director is appointed to run the prisons, Levin said.

New prisons have been proposed before for the Big Island.

Former Gov. Ben Cayetano proposed a minimum security prison for the Big Island in 1996; proposed a 500-bed prison near Hilo in 1997; and later his administration spent more than $1 million planning for a 2,300-bed prison near Kulani that was never built. He abandoned the idea after lawmakers in 1999 refused to appropriate the $130 million needed to build the prison.

Cayetano tried to revive the idea once again in 2002 with a request for money to plan a 1,000-bed "treatment facility" on the Big Island, but nothing came of his proposal.

In her 2002 campaign for governor, Linda Lingle proposed two 500-bed treatment facilities for Hawai'i inmates, but announced last year she would not actively pursue the idea because no community in Hawai'i seemed to want such a facility.

Evans said she believes a rural community where people are forced to drive long distances to get to work may see a prison as acceptable because it will offer jobs closer to home, as well as other benefits.

"I think that's what the $5 million is — to kind of zero in on what would work," she said.

That description resembles Ka'u, where people commute for hours each day to jobs in the Kona and Kohala hotels. Ka'u has been eyed in the past as a possible site for a new prison, but most people were against the idea when it came up during the Cayetano years, said Ka'u resident Guy Enriques.

"I don't recall all the issues, I just know it was a heated thing here, and we got a lot of roadside graffiti saying 'No prison here,' " Enriques said. "We do need jobs, I can tell you that, but at what expense? I can't say I have a stand on it at this point, but my feelings are that the community would be against it."

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.