With much discussion this legislative session about relieving prison crowding, one option, adopted by at least eight other states, received no attention here: transferring inmates out of state to privately run prisons — often for significant savings.

But don’t look for Rhode Island to consider the move anytime soon, says Ellen Alexander, assistant director of administration at the Department of Corrections.

While the department does have 57 inmates serving time in other states for security reasons, the department is philosophically opposed to moving inmates away from their families and lawyers for the purpose of saving money, says Alexander.

“One of the best incentives to rehabilitation is through [inmates’] reunification with their families,” Alexander says. “We have one of the most liberal visitation policies in the country because we believe maintaining ties with families is important.”

Despite the concern voiced this year about prison crowding, the situation at the Adult Correctional Institutions is comparatively much better now than during the late ’80s when the prison was constantly over capacity, declared unconstitutional, and under the thumb of a federal judge demanding that prisoners be released early.

Last week the ACI population fluctuated around 3,817 — 75 beds below its operational capacity. Under a federal court agreement, corrections officials can house another 193 inmates once they reach that capacity if they use every single bed, including those in infirmaries and solitary confinement.

VERMONT CORRECTIONS officials would characterize that as envious elbow room.

Of the 2,150 inmates in the Vermont system, 570, or about 26 percent, are serving time in private correctional facilities in Kentucky and Oklahoma, says John Perry, director of planning for the Vermont Department of Corrections.

Perry says the state has no choice but to send inmates out of state since no local community is willing to host a new prison.

“If we could find Vermont communities willing to have a prison we would build, but no one wants them,” Perry says. So for the last five years, Vermont has contracted with Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison company, with 64 facilities in 19 states.

“It was our last choice,” says Perry, who admits: “It’s not a good thing.”

Perry says Vermont lawmakers enacted the program over the objections of prisoner advocacy groups and inmate families who said the program was unfair and perhaps unconstitutional since it created obstacles for inmates seeking legal appeals.

The Vermont Supreme Court struck down a legal challenge to the program, but prison officials did install video conferencing so Vermont inmates out of state could have electronic visits and meetings with their families and lawyers.

MAINE IS another New England state that has considered transferring inmates to other jurisdictions to make space and save money.

The Maine legislature took up the matter this year only to realize “we don’t have the legal authority to board inmates out of state in private facilities,” said Denise Lord, associate commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections.

Besides hearing similar opposition to its plan to move 125 Maine inmates to Oklahoma for a $1-million savings, the debate in Augusta also became a philosophical one, says Lord.

“I think the feeling was we should be able to take care of this ourselves,” says Lord, “and we shouldn’t be using prisoners for profit.”

The plan died in the legislature. Lord says she’s not sure what next step Maine may take to ease prison crowding.

Even if Rhode Island prison officials wanted to transfer inmates out of state, there would be other hurdles, says Alexander.

For instance, while state law gives the director of corrections the power to request and then send inmates to other state prison facilities for safety and security reasons, Alexander says it’s unclear whether the director would have that same power to send them to private facilities simply to save money.

Moreover, the days of a corrections director acting single-handedly when it comes to prison crowding are over, says Alexander. The federal court agreement that freed Rhode Island from years of court supervision of its prison created the Criminal Justice Oversight Committee to address future problems of crowding.

That committee, made up of representatives from various branches of government, now makes those decisions in conjunction with corrections officials. And while the committee acknowledged in a 1998 resolution that the director of corrections should have the power to transfer inmates out of state in case of future crowding, the language of the resolution may have actually limited his options, Alexander conceded.

The resolution allows the director to transfer inmates only to “other state facilities.”

There are no public prisons in any state now renting out cell beds. The only vacancies are in privately run prisons.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY did pass legislation this session eliminating minimum sentences for drug crimes which supporters say would reduce the prison population. The legislation would give judges more flexibility in determining which criminals should receive prison time and which would be better served by drug treatment.

But Governor Carcieri vetoed the bill, saying state law already gives judges so much discretion that the minimums “exist more in theory than reality.”

The legislature also passed a bill eliminating the mandatory night in prison for those criminals who are heading out on home confinement.

Legislators, however, did not take up the issue of expanding the eligibility for home confinement, which supporters have said for years could reduce the prison population as well.

The legislature more than a decade ago clamped down on who could enter the program after two high-profile 1994 cases. In one case Juan Taveras, convicted of selling cocaine, was allowed to serve his 30-month home confinement in a University of Rhode Island dormitory. And in the other case, David Vial, authorized to leave home for a court hearing, ended up using his free time to help rob at gunpoint the Dexter Credit Union in Central Falls.

Home confinement “is a very complex issue that deserves more thorough study,” House Speaker William J. Murphy said in a statement. “I will be meeting during the off-session with leaders of our court system in order to reach a consensus and introduce legislation next year.”

tmooney@projo.com