GREENWOOD — Ten years ago, 900 convicted felons sat in West Virginia’s regional jails, waiting for a prison bed to open up. Today, there are more than 1,800.

Ten years ago, the state Supreme Court urged legislators to reconsider sentencing laws and grant more parole. This March, House Republicans killed a bill that sought to start that process, opposing a provision they characterized as leniency for criminals at the expense of public safety.

For decades, politicians and policymakers have debated what to do about overcrowded jails and prisons. Lawsuits have been filed and legislation introduced. Reports have been written and rulings issued. And yet, with the 11th-hour failure of the latest bill, the “crisis of disturbing proportions” the high court predicted in 2002 still looms.

The latest attempt to head it off is yet another study, with help from an independent body overseen by the nonpartisan Council of State Governments. But other studies have failed to solve the problem, and some corrections professionals have a hard time believing this time will be different.

“It’s really frustrating,” says George Trent, administrator of the North Central Regional Jail in Greenwood. “It’s like you’re running on a treadmill and nothing ever changes.”

West Virginia led the nation in prison population growth between 2000 and 2009, even though its overall population is aging and grew only 2.5 percent during the decade. And the inmates aren’t going anywhere: In 2010, the state had the nation’s third-lowest rate of adults on probation.

Lawmakers and corrections officials have approved piecemeal fixes — building new jails, finding creative ways to add a few beds here and there, and supporting community-based programs that help keep people out of the system in the first place.

But a comprehensive approach consistently falls victim to politics: Lawmakers are reluctant to spend money on a system that many of their constituents don’t spend time thinking about. The problem grows, but incrementally, with little sense of urgency. And politicians hesitate to change sentencing laws for fear of appearing soft on crime — and thus vulnerable at re-election time.

“If we want to be tough on crime, that’s an option,” says Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein, “but it comes at a cost.”

In fiscal 2011, the Division of Corrections spent $158 million to house inmates who belonged in its custody at the 10 regional jails. That’s $20 million more than in fiscal 2007.

The regional jails are largely intended to house inmates awaiting trial or serving sentences for lesser crimes. West Virginia started regionalizing the jails in the late 1990s to replace smaller, antiquated county jails that were run by county sheriffs.

The Justice Reinvestment Initiative, a project of the nonpartisan Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, is scrutinizing West Virginia’s public safety policies from top to bottom, as it did in 16 other states including Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Though some are hopeful a solution will emerge, the idea is practically incomprehensible to those who work at institutions every day.

“I can’t even imagine what one would look like,” says Debra Minnix, warden of the minimum- to medium-security Pruntytown Correctional Center. She’s been part of every major overcrowding initiative in her 23-year career, “and none of those initiatives has taken care of the problem.”

Carl Reynolds, a retired Texas courts administrator who’s now policy adviser for the Justice Center, says that from the outside, West Virginia looks like “kind of an analysis-paralysis situation.”

“You’ve studied it do death, and you’re not getting where you need to go,” he told legislators recently.

It’s the center’s job “to break that log jam,” Reynolds says, and its track record shows that’s possible. The center’s successes include helping Texas to reduce its inmate population by 8,000 over three years recently.

A critical component is bringing a “neutral outside perspective” to detailed data, Reynolds says. The team will also help legislators reconcile how the criminal justice system functions in theory — from the perspectives of police, prosecutors, prison guards, victims and more — with how it functions in reality.

“People really need to step up,” Reynolds says, “and step back from politics.”

They must be honest about whether the system they have produces the results they want. They must be guided by scientific evidence, not emotion. And they must understand there is no single solution.

There will likely be many, he says — from programs that change offenders’ behavior outside an institutional setting to sentences for crimes that make more sense.

“It’s not just about beds,” Reynolds says, although a previously proposed $200 million prison may be in the mix. “It’s about investing in programs that actually do have an impact.”

The Division of Corrections has long known it can’t build its way out of the crisis. Nor can it study forever.

“We need to take some action,” says Rubenstein. “We need to do some things, because as we continue to study, we continue to grow.”

Drugs and drug-related crimes are fueling the population behind bars. Experts estimate that at least 80 percent of inmates committed crimes somehow linked to drug or alcohol abuse, and about half of the total population are in for nonviolent offenses.

The bill that died this spring would have added 200 beds to prison-based drug treatment programs and given judges the power to reduce sentences for those who complete them.

Donna Kuroski, inmate services director at North Central, says more people could make parole if they had the chance to take the required courses, testing and evaluations. But in the teeming jails, few can.

Rubenstein says he’s encouraged by what appears to be bipartisan support for a new approach. A working group has 22 members representing everything from the parole board and public defenders to the Department of Health and Human Resources and the Association of Counties.

“The key is going to be to keep that group together around the table once the study is done,” Rubenstein says. “If we become splintered in any manner, then sadly, it’s not going to result in any action.”

The Republican lawyer from Kanawha County who led GOP delegates to kill the bill in March, is already concerned. Tim Armstead says the group is constituted “largely by the same people who have been pushing the agenda that I opposed.”

Core disagreements remain, he says, particularly about making it easier to release inmates already behind bars.

“There are a number of people in this process who simply want to reduce sentences, and simply want to treat the punishment of crime in a less strict manner,” Armstead says. He belongs to another group that “feels that the punishment of crime is a key role of government, and ensuring safety in our communities is a key role of government.”

The research should give both sides “some sound data to base our opinions on,” Armstead says. Ultimately, though, it’s up to the Legislature — not the working group — to balance the issues.

“So I think there’s still going to be a good bit of discussion no matter what those findings are,” Armstead says. “And no matter what the working group proposes, I would certainly hope that that wouldn’t be something that we simply rubber-stamp, and I don’t expect us to.”

Despite the overcrowding, there hasn’t been a major uprising in a West Virginia institution since 1986, when inmates in the overcrowded, Civil War-era West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville seized control at dinner time, taking 15 guards hostage. Three inmates died, and the prison later closed.

But the possibility of large-scale violence is ever-present — and nearly happened at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in the summer of 2000. Inmates staged a sit-in at the maximum-security prison, refusing to come off the yard. Fortunately, says Warden David Ballard, they didn’t think it through.

“It was one of the hottest days of the year and they’re out there with no water, no facilities,” he recalls. “It took about eight hours before they started asking to come back in.”

When they did, guards found piles of rocks and homemade weapons.

Democratic state Sen. Bill Laird, a former four-term sheriff from Fayette County who ran a jail before regionalization, says uprisings and lawsuits historically drive what progress West Virginia makes.

He doesn’t want to see any more of either.

“I do believe we’re literally at the point where we can’t kick the can down the road and defer attention to this matter anymore,” he says. “There’s a great sense of urgency in my mind. I can’t think of any more important public policy issue facing our Legislature today.”