CHARLESTON — A fresh look at West Virginia’s criminal sentencing laws with an eye toward easing crowded prisons and jails was authorized Wednesday by a legislative panel.

With little discussion, the Joint Committee on Government and Finance agreed to spend $56,000 on the research at West Virginia University.

And that expenditure, opined Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, D-Marshall, is a bargain.

“That might seem a bit high,” Kessler said of the study’s price tag. “But consider that we spend $25,000 a year for each inmate’s upkeep.”

Moreover, he pointed out, a new prison to accommodate a burgeoning population would cost at least $20 million.

Majority Leader Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, a lifelong attorney who once practiced criminal law, applauded the research.

Back when he was handling criminal law, Chafin recalled how a defendant in court for a property crime likely could have avoided a prison stretch.

But when the victim and his family appeared in court, the sitting judge clearly was moved and came down hard on the defendant, the senator said.

“First thing you know, the guy’s locked up one to 10 and really didn’t need to go,” Chafin said.

An analytical look at West Virginia’s sentencing structure was one of 13 recommendations advanced by a special task force Gov. Joe Manchin set up to examine the crowded conditions in prisons and jails.

Just this week, another legislative panel learned the 10 regional jails contain 3,962 inmates — 1,178 above the original design capacity — and 1,299 of them are awaiting transfers to state prisons.

Similar research was conducted by WVU about 10 years ago, but many criminal statutes have been altered since then.

Within the past decade, Kessler pointed out afterward, the Legislature has raised penalties on two to three dozen statutes, often in response to a sensational crime given voluminous media attention.

“It seems that we do it piecemeal often times in knee-jerk reaction to some type of crime that happens in our communities that gets a lot of headlines,” he said.

“So we go out and double the penalties on those.”

Just this year, the Legislature heightened penalties for assaults against state employees in response to the slaying of a state social worker, he noted.

“There’s never been a real, rational analysis of why we’ve done things,” Kessler said.

For instance, he said, armed robbery can land a minimum term of 10 years with no shutoff specified — up to 200 years if a judge so wills.

“Second-degree murder is 10 to 40 years,” he said.

“You could actually get a longer sentence for robbing someone than killing them. We just really need to look at the proportionality of all our statutes.”

Kessler’s motion before the committee specified the WVU research would be completed in time for the 2010 session, which begins Jan. 13.

“There may be instances where maybe we need to decriminalize activity altogether, which would do away with the requirement that people be appointed an attorney,” he said.

And that, in turn, would not only put fewer people behind bars but lower regional costs imposed on counties, many of them struggling now to pay such bills.

Kessler expects monthly updates on progress WVU makes on the study.

“This gives us an objective analysis of something without political fear,” the former prosecutor said.

“It’s never politically popular to go out and reduce sentences in anything. To the contrary, it’s more political popular to go out and pass bills that double the sentences and throw away the key.”

Such an attitude ultimately harms the taxpayer with steeper taxes, however, he said.

“I think if we have an objective, analytical analysis of our laws, with proposed recommendations, that might alleviate some of the fear of the policy makers,” Kessler added.