Gov. Linda Lingle and Democratic legislators need to cut through prison politics and hammer out a plan both sides can live with to deal with some 2,000 Hawai'i convicts in Mainland prisons.

Otherwise, we'll remain stuck in an infinite loop in which the Legislature tries to dictate minute details of prison operations, the governor resists, and the Corrections Division remains one of the most troubled state agencies.

The latest fight involves SB 932, which was passed by the Legislature this year, over Lingle's veto, to require the early return of inmates from the Mainland as they near their parole date. The governor says she has nowhere to put them in crowded local prisons.

That acrimony followed the Senate's vote of no confidence in Lingle's prisons stewardship when lawmakers rejected her nomination of Iwalani White for a new term as public safety director.

It may be a worthy goal to bring prisoners home from the Mainland a year before their parole to prepare them for release back into the community — and to return in-state inmates to the counties where they would receive the most support, as lawmakers wish.

But it's incomprehensible that the Legislature refused Lingle's request to negotiate a more realistic time frame for implementation to consider availability of facilities.

The governor says a strict interpretation of the law could require the state to immediately bring home more than 500 prisoners, and she insists there's no room for them without giving early release or furloughs to inmates already here.

Legislators say they needed to force the issue with the governor because the administration has been slow to develop an effective re-entry program to help former inmates succeed on the outside.

The attorney general is studying whether the requirements of SB 932 are mandatory or if the governor can use her discretion in bringing inmates back depending on space and resources; if it turns out to be the latter, the whole argument may have been political hot air.

In either case, the dispute will go on, as the bill creates a legislative oversight committee to provide ongoing direction to the Department of Public Safety, which the administration sees as overstepping the Legislature's policy bounds to interfere with executive functions.

The practice of sending overflow Hawai'i inmates to the Mainland was initiated by former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano, who was whipsawed by federal demands to reduce overcrowding at local prisons and community resistance to building a new local facility anywhere he looked.

Lingle initially campaigned in support of a new Hawai'i prison, but abandoned it when no realistic site could win community acceptance.

Sending some 40 percent of our convicts to the Mainland appears here to stay, with Hawai'i inmates being consolidated in Arizona at a new 1,896-bed private facility built exclusively for Hawai'i prisoners that will serve local food and observe Hawai'i cultural practices.

The policy seems to have public support, as long as it's done humanely. It saves money, reduces conflict over the location of a new Hawai'i prison and provides less opportunity for the rampant abuse of sick leave and overtime in local correctional facilities.

Democrat Randall Iwase got nowhere when he campaigned against Lingle last year on a call to bring Hawai'i inmates home and start a local prison industry.

Lingle is right that there's weak public support for a new Hawai'i prison big enough to bring everybody home, and the Legislature has valid concerns about assuring a smooth re-entry into the local community for inmates housed on the Mainland.

But we'll never see a workable resolution until the two sides start talking to each other instead of past each other.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.