Facing a critical shortage of halfway houses and community protests that have killed new sites by the dozens, legislative leaders Wednesday proposed a new tack: Build them on prison land in urban areas.

Then, they suggested, the protests might quiet and hundreds of additional, much-needed beds might be able to open — and give Texas more than just seven halfway houses statewide, fewer than in smaller states.

"Almost nobody wants a halfway house full of convicted felons in their neighborhood, so we almost never get a new one," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. "The waiting lists get longer and longer . . . But the fact is, we need additional beds and they need to go someplace."

At a Capitol hearing, committee members expressed shock that two-thirds of the new halfway house beds they funded last year — 200 of the 300 beds — will be in El Paso because there were no alternative sites.

Discussion shifted to the possibility of building new halfway houses on the grounds of existing prisons, especially in and around Houston. That area accounts for about a quarter of all prison commitments in Texas.

The state now has halfway houses in Beaumont, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso and Austin — in a lockup near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the county-run Correctional Complex in Del Valle. El Paso has two.

Those halfway houses hold 1,400 parole-bound felons.

San Antonio is the largest Texas city without one.

State Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, recalled that intense community protests have derailed plans for a halfway house there.

"We don't want to abridge local control, local decisions, but there's an argument to be made that an existing prison might be a good place to locate them — especially in urban areas," Seliger said.

In the past 20 years, halfway houses have been a controversial aspect of Texas' prison system, with protests killing every new location aside from one in El Paso that officials said is in a former jail in an industrial area.

Whitmire said there are too few halfway house beds, meaning some convicts must stay in prison for months until a halfway house bed opens up. Then most convicts cannot transition out of prison in their hometown or home county, he said.

Whitmire and other senators advocated a study. Prison officials, while publicly noncommittal, agreed more halfway houses sites are needed. Michelle Lyons, the system's spokeswoman, said the state currently is 255 beds short — down from 500 last year.

"What we are doing now makes no sense," Whitmire told the committee. "Locating them on existing (prison) units makes a lot of sense."