For the past 15 years, state officials pursued various plans for adding prison space in Hawai'i, ranging from a proposal for a massive new 2,300-bed lockup at Kulani on the Big Island to more modest 500-bed "secure treatment facilities" proposed by Gov. Linda Lingle in her 2002 campaign.

This week, Lingle all but abandoned the idea of building a new prison in Hawai'i, saying no community ever stepped forward to offer a site where a new state prison would be welcome.

The state has been exporting inmates to privately operated Mainland prisons for the past 10 years in lieu of building a new in-state prison. Lingle's comments, made after she filed for re-election Thursday, suggest that if she wins a second term, it could easily be another decade before Hawai'i opens a major new prison.

Linda Smith, senior policy adviser for Lingle, said Lingle has come to "a different set of conclusions" since the 2002 campaign on the prison issue.

"Right now our focus is in recognizing that we're going to have to continue to house inmates on the Mainland, and no community has come forward to say that they want to have prisons in their particular area, so at this point we do not have plans to build a new prison in the state of Hawai'i," Smith said.

Consultant Carter Goble Associates produced a 2003 master plan for the prison system that envisioned spending $1 billion over the next 10 years to improve and dramatically expand Hawai'i's prison and jail system so the Mainland inmates could be returned.

However, lawmakers and some administration officials are skeptical the state will ever spend that much on the correctional system when schools and other construction projects are competing for the same construction dollars. The most recent state prison built in Hawai'i was Halawa Medium Security Facility, which opened in 1987.

While Lingle didn't flatly rule out a new prison or a new secure treatment facility, she emphasized the state plans to improve existing prisons and jails, and to build smaller community-based "re-entry" facilities to help inmates return to society after serving their sentences.

Lingle has said her long-term goal is to return all of the inmates on the Mainland because they would have a better shot at rehabilitation in Hawai'i, where they would serve their sentences closer to their families and the communities where they will eventually be released.

Smith said returning the Mainland inmates to Hawai'i "would clearly be the ideal. When that will be possible, at this point, we do not know."

The state now sends about 1,900 men and women convicts to privately run prisons in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kentucky and Arizona because there is no room for them in Hawai'i prisons.

That amounts to about half of the state's prison population, and Hawai'i now holds a larger percentage of its prison inmates out of state than any other state in the nation.

The state spends about $40 million a year to hold inmates out of state, a sum that is expected to increase to more than $50 million a year in the months ahead as the state sends an additional 650 inmates out of state.

The state's practice of exporting prison inmates to the Mainland has drawn criticism from a number of quarters, including Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons.

The Lingle administration never actually proposed a site for a new prison or treatment facility, and Brady said the administration never made a serious effort to bring the Mainland inmates back to Hawai'i.

"It's no big surprise because it's easier for her to get rid of the problem," Brady said. "There is no strategy to bring people home. It's to get rid of the problem."

Brady said no community will ever invite the state in to build a prison, and said Lingle needs to go out and make a case to the public for her correctional plans.

"We need to bring the women home because most of the women are mothers, and I think it's really detrimental, and it's kind of contradictory since this administration has talked about strengthening families," Brady said. "This business of sending people thousands of miles away does not strengthen families. It tears the social fabric of Hawai'i."

Jeraldine Brown, a former inmate and mother of two, said women who return from prison on the Mainland struggle to fit back in and mend their relationships with their children. Brown served more than three years in prisons in Oklahoma, Colorado and Kentucky.

"The chances of them failing is great," Brown said. "Don't they (state officials) think that it's wiser to have the prison built in Hawai'i?"

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.