PROVIDENCE — Divert more convicts from prison to alcohol and drug treatment. Increase the number of criminals on home confinement. Parole scores more prisoners than has been the recent practice. And for those prisoners who don’t qualify for any of these get-out-of-jail alternatives: offer them the opportunity to earn more good-time days, toward early release, than current law allows.

These were among the alternatives presented behind closed doors yesterday to the governor, key lawmakers and other major players in the state’s law and order community by an arm of the Council of State Governments on the same day that a state Senate committee voted 9 to 1 to recommend the reappointment of the state’s prison chief, A.T. Wall.

Wall was hailed as a “visionary” by, among others, a nun, a doctor who treats infectious diseases among prisoners, the acting superintendent of the state police and Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman, while being reviled by the president of the prison-guards union, which has been locked in a contract dispute with prison management since 2003.

“Yes, we’ve had our differences with correctional directors in the past, but never to this degree,” said union president Richard Ferruccio. “Never have correctional staff felt so insecure about the support they receive from administrators; never have they felt so vulnerable.”

Governor Carcieri’s proposed budget for the year beginning July 1 hinges on the release of 500 prisoners from the bulging-at-the-seams Adult Correctional Institutions, in Cranston. The four-page proposal delivered by representatives of the CSG’s Justice Center yesterday suggested a 10-point plan for cutting the prison population by 502 inmates, to save a potential $4 million.

Among the findings:

•From 1997 to 2007, the prison population increased 15 percent.

•The population is projected to increase an additional 21 percent over the next 10 years.

•“Unless policymakers act, the state will be required to spend an additional $300 million in operating costs at the ACI over the next 10 years to accommodate the projected increase in the prison population.”

No decisions were reached yesterday on which — if any — of the proposals to pursue. But Carcieri told an impromptu news conference outside his office that the “vast majority seem very reasonable and thoughtful,” and, in his mind, no threat to public safety because they are aimed at “a population that we know have not committed violent crimes.”

But on his way out of the State House from another meeting, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch raised warning flags about the deficit-driven plan to release hundreds of prisoners, and questioned why he was not invited to the private briefing attended by officials from the courts, the public defenders’ office and the state Parole Board.

“Anyone can pick a number,” he said, “but how do you really pick who those people are … who’s going to tell the victims? And if it’s a ‘victimless crime,’ and let’s say a lot of them are drug-related issues, … are we just going to cast them back out on the streets? Are there enough [treatment] beds? Are there enough probation officers?”

“Maybe that’s the start of a think-tank I haven’t been admitted to, but I’ll try to get my résumé together and see if they’ll talk to me,” Lynch said. “I am the attorney general.”

The department’s budget of $164 million for this fiscal year was based on an average daily inmate population of 3,375. But the daily population has surged to around 3,768, the highest in the department’s history, requiring Wall to ask for millions more to finish out this year.

The reasons are many. Among them: 31 percent of released prisoners are reincarcerated within a year, a rate that is 10 percent higher than the national average. Within three years, the number that return to the ACI is 50 percent.

The Department of Corrections is asking for $189 million for the next fiscal year, based on an inmate population projection of 3,789. But Carcieri said the department’s budget could only afford an inmate population of 3,289, necessitating the removal of 500 inmates.

Lawmakers have their own proposals. One, cosponsored by Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, would give judges the discretion to waive court fines and costs for defendants who are indigent or unable to pay, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that they are behind in child-support or victim restitution payments despite their “good faith efforts to pay.”

Among the highlights of the Council of State Governments proposal:

•Provide state funds to secure more drug-treatment beds for people eligible for parole but awaiting a treatment slot. Estimate: 20 fewer inmates.

•Accelerate the number of people being paroled by using age, date of first offense and other “science-based” criteria for deciding who is least likely to commit another crime. Estimate: 100 fewer inmates.

•Increase the number of people placed on home confinement who would otherwise be held at the ACI. Estimate: 70 fewer inmates.

•Give less-serious offenders the same opportunity that more-serious offenders now have to earn 10 days toward early release for every 30 days of good behavior — and apply this new “earned-time” rule retroactively. These moves alone are expected to free an additional 181 prisoners during the 2007-’08 budget year.

•Provide additional incentives for people in prison to complete drug-treatment and job-training programs by giving them 5 days of credit toward early release for every month they participate in such a program, and a 30-day credit for completing the program. Estimate: 55 fewer inmates.

•Reduce the number of people “held at the ACI awaiting trial” for lack of less than $500 bail. Estimate: 10 fewer inmates.

•Target probation supervision to the first 12 months after release, when people are most likely to reoffend, and limit felony probation — which can now extend over 10 years or more — to 3 years “except for offenses punishable by life imprisonment.” Estimate: 27 fewer inmates.

Nowhere in the proposal is there a definition of who might qualify for any of these early-release options.

Saying “this is just a start,” Carcieri said the participants in yesterday’s meeting agreed to set up a “working committee representing each of the three branches … [to] see if we can get everybody in basic agreement on a reform strategy.”

kgregg@projo.com