Vaughn Killeen, who took over the Department of Corrections from former Director Tom Beauclair in July after Gov. Jim Risch criticized the agency, says he wants to build a 1,000-bed men's prison, a 400-bed women's prison and a 300-bed prison for inmates with mental health problems.

They could be built using material like that made by Sprung Instant Structures, a West Jordan-based company whose dome-like buildings house the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina, the U.S. military in Baghdad and facilities at Tamarack Resort in Idaho.

Killeen said he wants to bring home the more than 450 Idaho inmates who are being held in Texas and Minnesota due to overcrowding here. He hopes to ask the 2007 Legislature for construction money to have these new facilities up and running by 2010.

That likely means Idaho's shortage of prison space - nearly 7,000 inmates, but just 6,000 beds - will continue for at least three years. Idaho's prison population grows by between 30 and 40 inmates a month.

''We're at a critical juncture in the Department of Correction,'' Killeen told Board of Correction members on Friday, according to the Idaho Statesman. ''We've got to get moving with the crisis that we face.''

Killeen hopes to slash the estimated $232 million cost for new prisons - up from the $180 million figure Beauclair told lawmakers was needed during hearings earlier this year - by using dome-like buildings from Sprung.