A debate over reforming Hawaii’s criminal justice system began Tuesday at the state Legislature with mostly positive comments about two major bills designed to address inefficiencies in the system, reinvest millions of dollars in savings to ease overcrowding in the state’s prisons and eventually stop the practice of sending more inmates to the mainland.

Supporters of the proposed reforms — called the Justice Reinvestment Initiative — said eliminating the inefficiencies would save the state more than $150 million over the next six years.

Proponents also said the reforms would:

» Reduce the need for prison space by an estimated 410 beds per day in the first year.

» Enhance public safety by redirecting resources to prisoners most likely to reoffend once released.

» Ease the need to house about 1,700 prisoners on the mainland at an annual cost of about $45 million, resulting in more of that money being spent in Hawaii and creating jobs.

But Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro cautioned legislators that the initiative puts too much emphasis on releasing prisoners at the expense of public safety and relies too heavily on mandates, taking away discretion from the Hawaii Paroling Authority on when certain inmates are set free.

Testifying on Senate Bill 2776, one of the two measures, Kaneshiro said, "This bill is basically about releasing prisoners."

The Senate committees on Public Safety and the Judiciary, which met jointly Tuesday to hear testimony on the bill, deferred a vote until next week. Among other things, the bill would streamline the process for pretrial detentions — Hawaii incarcerates suspects much longer than many other places — and limit the length of imprisonment for first-time parole violators.

The second measure, Senate Bill 2777, was passed by the Public Safety Committee. That measure would, among other things, limit probation periods for most Class B and C felony offenses to three years instead of five and increase the dollar threshold for determining what is felony theft to $750, from the current $300.

Debbie Shimizu, policy analyst for Gov. Neil Abercrombie, said the reforms are among the administration’s priorities this session and will help meet his goal of keeping prisoners in Hawaii.

A major focus of the initiative is to release prisoners once they serve their minimum sentences if they are considered at low risk of committing new offenses. The common practice in Hawaii is to hold many of those prisoners beyond their minimum sentences, even though that is counter to what some national studies show to be most effective for rehabilitating low-risk inmates.

State Circuit Judge Steve Alm, who attended Tuesday’s hearing, was asked by a legislator for his feedback. Alm told the committees that he supports supervised release of low-risk prisoners once they’ve served their minimum sentences.

If they stay in prison, "they’re surrounded by criminals, and that’s not going to do them any good," said Alm, who participated in a working group that helped craft the initiative.