In an effort to avert the cost of opening another women’s prison, a Gresham lawmaker wants to expand an early-release program that already has saved 182,642 state prison bed days.

Known as short-term transitional leave, the program has been “the most successful sentencing change” in the three-year old “Justice Reinvestment” law in terms of saving money and increasing public safety, said Michael Schmidt, executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission.

Inmates eligible for the program are released 90 days short of their sentence. Rep. Carla Piluso, D-Gresham, is sponsoring a bill that could increase that to 120 to 180 days.

“We are trying to save our state money, and we are trying to do what is right for public safety and these incarcerated women,” Piluso said.

The 2013 law also lowered penalties for certain property and drug possession crimes and authorized about $55 million in grants since 2013 to pay for counties to set up and enhance support services for offenders on probation and parole.

Inmates who don’t have a mandatory minimum sentence and have no violations or program failures in the past 12 months are eligible for short-term transitional leave.

Doubling the length of the program would help delay opening a second women’s prison by at least two years and possibly longer, according to an analysis by the Oregon Justice Commission. Combined with other efforts, the program might help eliminate the need for a second women’s prison in the future, Piluso said.

The program’s expansion to 90 days has saved 182,642 prison bed days since January 2014. That represents a cost savings of at least $16.6 million, after subtracting the cost of jail beds for offenders who violate conditions of release, according to a calculation by the Pamplin Media Group/EO Media Group capital bureau using DOC’s cost per inmate per day.

Results since January 2014 so far have been promising. Only 5 percent of participants have failed the program, and most of them failed for technical reasons, said Jeremiah Stomberg, assistant director of the DOC Community Corrections Division.

Critics of the early release program, however, say there is not yet enough data to determine if the program has been working.

Timothy Colahan of the Oregon District Attorneys Association said criminal justice officials need at least three to four years of results to accurately predict recidivism rates and other impacts of releasing inmates early.

Colahan said the association would likely oppose any legislation to expand the program at this point, especially if lawmakers provide no additional resources for housing inmates on early release.

Overcrowding at the state’s only women’s prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, could force the Department of Corrections to open a second women’s prison at the old Oregon State Penitentiary Minimum Security facility in January 2018. Opening the second prison will cost an estimated $9.5 million, according to the Department of Corrections. The minimum security facility was shuttered in 2010 because of budget cuts.

The threshold number of inmates that can safely be housed at Coffee Creek is 1,280, said Colette Peters, director of the Department of Corrections. The prison’s population hovers just above or below the threshold on a daily basis, Peters said.

Increasing the transitional leave program to 180 days would delay the need to open that facility by at least two years, according analysis by the Criminal Justice Commission. That could give lawmakers time to try other strategies to reduce the women’s prison population.

Piluso said she is still garnering feedback on the proposal from prosecutors, DOC, county corrections offices and the Criminal Justice Commission.

During a recent meeting of the legislative emergency board, Ways and Means co-chairman Richard Devlin said to avoid opening a second women’s prison, lawmakers will need to act fast on solutions.

“I think we all recognize that legislation we passed in the last session did not have the degree of positive results we had hoped it would have,” Devlin said. “But we need to have more than a philosophical discussion here and theoretical discussion of programs, because unless we show an actual long-term ability to keep (the population) under that threshold, we are going to have to open the Oregon Women’s Correctional Facility. We will not have a choice.”