PROVIDENCE — In a typical election year, state lawmakers, anxious to show they are tough on crime, often push hard for legislation that cracks down on criminals and promises the public they mean business.

In many ways, this year is no exception. But there’s also something less typical happening on Smith Hill. Amid the calls to curb underage drinking and stiffen penalties for hit-and-run accidents, legislators are pushing bills that limit drug sentences, reduce time in prison, change probation rules and erase records for some offenses.

Political observers say it’s hardly a coincidence that these bills have found footing amid a budget crisis.

“It’s no accident that we’re seeing a lot of prison bills at a time when we have a huge deficit,” said Brown University political science Prof. Darrell West.

The state corrections budget –– driven by the prison population –– has swelled to $188 million. As that’s happened, advocates have called for systemic change. By reducing the prison population, they say the state could free up valuable resources for reinvestment in communities.

This year, with Rhode Island facing its worst budget deficit in two decades, criminal advocates have emphasized what the civil-rights group Direct Action for Rights and Equality calls the “direction connection” between prison costs and “the strain on the state’s budget.”

“We’re cutting teachers, we’re cutting programs in schools, we’re cutting services to people and yet we’re continuing to fund the prison budget and to fund incarceration,” said Sol Rodriguez, director of the prisoner reentry group, The Family Life Center. “Crime has not gone up, crime has stayed pretty much the same in this state and yet we have more and more people in prison than we ever have.”

A recent report by the Pew Center on the States showed that Rhode Island spends more per inmate than any other state.

Legislators, West said, are finally “waking up to those costs” and they’re acting.

Earlier this session, lawmakers approved a proposal allowing prisoners to shave time off their sentences for good behavior. Parts of that plan, expected to save $1 million next year and a total of $22 million over 10 years, are already in practice at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Following an executive veto last year, the House and Senate again passed bills reducing the time drug offenders must serve in prison. They are now waiting for the proposals to complete their routes through the Assembly.

Also moving toward approval is a bill that would ensure that probation violators get out of prison if the violation charges are cleared. That proposal was passed by the House and is headed for a Senate Committee this week.

But some say changing the state’s sentencing systems is far more complex than simply changing the bottom line. It takes time to convince the public –– and the politicians –– that altering how prisoners are sentenced won’t create a public safety threat.

“Politicians are petrified of being soft on crime, [and] they’re afraid to vote on anything that looks like they are,” said Roger Williams Law School Prof. David Zlotnick, a former federal prosecutor. “So this has to be packaged in a way that makes them not soft on crime, but smart on crime.” Zlotnick calls it the rhetoric of sentencing reform. “You have to explain that the dollars spent on reentry [instead of incarceration] are better dollars in terms of protecting the public. If we don’t explain it this way, we lose.”

So far this session, the criminal-rights lobby seems far from losing.

“Sometimes it takes awhile for society to realize where we’ve gone and why we’ve gone there,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Donald J. Lally Jr., D-Narragansett.

“Whereas before these issues made people really nervous and maybe too scared to take action, there’s been a real shift,” said DARE’s Mimi Budnick. “Some of that may be motivated by the budget, but some of that comes from a genuine place of realizing that our criminal justice program is broken and we need to start looking at things in a different way.”

The Ocean State is not alone. With prison costs rising, several other states are reaching the same conclusions, she said.

But here in Rhode Island, many legislators, particularly in the House, are criminal defense lawyers. That includes Speaker William J. Murphy, a busy defense lawyer.

They say their jobs have little to do with their legislative viewpoints and the state’s public defender, John Hardiman, agrees.

“As a public defender, I’ve found just the opposite,” he said.

Hardiman, along with Lally and Speaker Murphy, say it’s important not to lump these bills together, just because they might have to do with prisons or the court system.

Even the state’s top prosecutor has elected not to group them together. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch favored prison sentence credits, while taking a neutral stance on the mandatory minimum sentences law, and voicing opposition to the so-called “quash and destroy bill” that has passed the House and is headed for the Senate. That proposal would erase criminal records in cases where the accused was given a deferred sentence, usually in exchange for pleading no contest or guilty to a crime.

But whether the stakeholders believe that they fall under a common agenda, it’s hard to ignore that this legislation is collectively moving.

At a criminal-rights rally last week, advocates hung bright ribbons –– one for each of the 33,000 Rhode Islanders serving time in prison, on probation or parole. It was a call for change, they said, and a call for justice, they said. Yet it was also a celebration for all that’s been accomplished or could be by the time the session recesses in June.

“We’re really excited about what’s happening here,” Budnick said. “I think the education we’ve been doing up at the State House the last few years is really starting to pay off.”

cneedham@projo.com