The Criminal Justice Institute Inc. has confirmed what many corrections researchers and even officials within the state already believe: Hawai'i needs to do more — much more — to reduce the prison population through community-based programs and alternatives to incarceration.

The institute, a national nonprofit firm that specializes in correctional research and planning, was hired by the state to revise the Department of Public Safety's security classification system.

Given that prison space is in such short supply that 2,000 inmates must be transferred to Mainland facilities, it's important that the wrong people not be assigned to a prison bed.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what's been happening. The report estimated that 150 low-risk inmates are being sent to the Mainland, at a cost of about $3 million a year, when it would have been smarter all around to keep them here, in alternative facilities that provide substance-abuse treatment and other programs.

The new classification system is useful in that it will define more clearly where the most critical needs lie.

Of course, the real problem is that many of these prisoners who pose a low security risk have been sent to Mainland lockups because there's no other place to put them here. Hawai'i has simply not kept up with the need for treatment beds and other community-based programs that prepare inmates to rejoin the community before their release.

To some extent, the state's latest proposal to install tent-like temporary structures at existing prisons, attempts to deal with this critical need. But nobody can argue that the plan — using federal funds for two structures on Maui, two on Kaua'i and three on the Big Island for up to 448 minimum-security or community-custody inmates — is anything more that an 11th-hour effort to manage, rather than solve, the problem.

The $13 million proposed for the structures was originally awarded in 1996, and was meant for an 800-bed jail and transition facility in Pu'unene on Maui. Permanent facilities would certainly go further toward toward breaking the cycle of incarceration than tents.

The department believes the report should bolster its case for adding capacity at reintegration programs for Mainland inmates, but is rightly worried that in a tight budgetary year, corrections programs will get short shrift.

That's certainly been the history in this state, where elected leaders haven't put the commitment or funds into creating sensible solutions to our prison crisis. Sending people to prison who don't belong there is no solution at all.