Nearly a year ago at this time, the sense of outrage was palpable: How could a repeat armed robber - who had previously shot a guard while holding up a jewelry store - have been released on parole and freed to shoot again, killing a Woburn police officer in another jewelry heist the day after Christmas? The public outcry created political backlash that prompted the firing of the state Parole Board and swift reconsideration of the state’s policies on parole.

But 2011 is coming to a close without legislative consensus on a plan to crack down on habitual offenders. Competing House and Senate plans remain lodged in conference committee, with no resolution expected to emerge until 2012. And a group of activists is panning the existing legislative alternatives as a “knee-jerk reaction’’ crafted by politicians trying to appear tough on crime.

“We support being hard on crime, but also demand that our legislators be smart on crime,’’ said Benjamin F. Thompson, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition.

His nonprofit advocacy group, along with the Ella J. Baker House, will hold a community forum on Wednesday aimed at rallying the community against “three-strikes’’ legislation, which would revoke parole eligibility for anyone convicted more than twice of certain felonies and postpone parole for those convicted of certain crimes.

The forum is part of a coordinated campaign that activists are launching to try to turn the tide against three-strikes legislation. Critics, including former US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, former state corrections commissioner Kathleen Dennehy, and criminal defense attorney Max Stern, are joining a national pushback against such policies.

In Massachusetts, the group plans to counter the political pressure for tough-on-crime laws that followed the police shooting last year with a message that politicians should instead be smart on crime. They argue that three-strikes legislation will end up being much tougher on prisons and the state budget than they realize.

“It certainly fits on a bumper sticker: Lock up the bad guys,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services. “But some grownup in power needs to say, ‘What are we doing? Can we do this better?’ Instead of spending all this money incarcerating the bad guys after the third strike, why don’t we focus on them after the first strike and turn people who are human beings into tax-paying citizens?’’

Prisoner advocates say that tough-on-crime mandatory minimum sentences have overfilled prisons, creating costly conditions for cash-strapped states and dangerous overcrowding for inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. In May, the Supreme Court ordered California to release 34,000 inmates housed in state prisons to alleviate severe overcrowding, and thousands of nonviolent offenders are being shifted into county jails.

“The best any of us can hope for right now is the narrowest three-strikes bill to come out of conference committee,’’ Walker added, pointing to a version that would limit three-strikes crimes to crimes of direct violence. “We have an incredibly expensive system as it is - $1 billion a year just to lock people up - and it’s not working. The recidivism rate is going up, despite the increases you see in county and sheriffs’ budgets.’’

Activists say that both versions of the bill are fiscally irresponsible and would cause exorbitant new prison costs - as much as $75 million a year - without halting the violence they aim to address. And, they say, it would disproportionately affect the black community, leading the activists to urge the state’s first African-American governor to block it.

“Governor Patrick needs to step up and exercise clear and unequivocal leadership on an issue which so disproportionately affects the people who voted most consistently for him,’’ said Rev. Eugene Rivers, a Dorchester pastor and community leader.

The bipartisan Senate bill was filed in January, just weeks after the Dec. 26 fatal shooting of Woburn police officer John Maguire by Domenic Cinelli, a repeat armed robber who had been released on parole.

Under the bill, inmates would be ineligible for parole if they were concurrently serving more than one sentence of 15 years to life, or if they had been convicted of three or more felonies. Cinelli was serving three concurrent life sentences when he was freed in 2009. The bill would also require those serving life sentences on charges other than first-degree murder to wait longer before becoming eligible for parole. In the past, they became eligible in 15 years; this would push that to 25 years.

The bill was modeled on legislation that had been proposed in memory of Melissa Gosule, a 27-year-old Randolph woman who was killed in 1999 by a paroled violent criminal who gave her a ride after her car broke down.

The Senate bill also proposed reducing the mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes, and making drug offenders already serving mandatory minimum sentences eligible for parole when they reach the new minimums.

The House responded with a bill focused solely on imposing new three-strikes regulations.

“Clearly, the House dealt with this in a much narrower way than the Senate and because of that, I think there’s a lot of material that needs to be discussed,’’ said state Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty, a Chelsea Democrat who is House chairman of the judiciary committee.

Advocates say the three-strikes law would also throw the book at criminals whose third offense may not be directly violent. Included among the third-strike offenses are breaking and entering a home at night, illegal gun possession or sales, or stalking in violation of a restraining order.

State Senator Cynthia Creem, the Newton Democrat and Senate chairwoman of the judiciary committee, said she is open to suggestions from the organizers, but noted that the list of offenses has already been cut since the bill was first introduced.

Thompson cited California as evidence of the Legislature’s misdirected aim. That state passed the nation’s first and toughest three-strikes law in 1994, a year after a 12-year-old named Polly Klaas was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom sleepover and killed by a recently paroled two-time convict.

Most dangerously, Thompson said, he worries about the message the bill might send a two-time offender who is about to be nabbed on a drug-related crime - and who is then staring down a police officer and the possibility of life in prison.

“Under three strikes, you turn some people into caged animals. You put them in the corner and say, ‘The next time you do something stupid, you have nothing to lose,’ ’’ Thompson said. “The nothing-to-lose-mentality is frightening to me.’’

The forum is planned for Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the St. James African Orthodox Church in Roxbury.

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