The Pew Charitable Trusts believes that facts, figures, sidebar quotations and multi-colored graphs are the keys to policy change.  For years now, policy wonks have been crunching the numbers and concluding that America can’t afford its vast gulag.

But is anybody listening? 

If you are concerned about America’s addiction to mass incarceration you will want to give the Pew Center on the State’s report your careful attention.  There is nothing new here. 

You will learn that virtually one-in-one hundred American adults is currently locked up–a fact that has received headline attention in newspapers across the country. 

You will learn that the incarceration of women is exploding. 

You will learn that one-in-nine black males between the ages of 20 and 34 is currently locked up. 

You will learn that some states (Louisiana, for instance) minimize the cost of incarceration by running prisons on the cheap, while other states (like California) are in deep financial trouble because they pay prison personnel inflated salaries.

The Pew report is riddled with common sense, smart-on-crime quotations from the nations governors–an indication that lock-’em-up political rhetoric may be on the decline.

None of this explains why America locks up between five and ten times as many of her citizens as do other Western democracies.  Nor is there any serious attempt to grapple with the bizarre over-incarceration of young black males.  The one-in-nine statistic suggests that something is terribly wrong–but the precise malady is never diagnosed. 

I would like to see a report focusing on the incarceration of poor black people.  What percentage of young black males in America’s poorest neighborhoods are currently locked up?  One-in-three?  One-in-two?  What percentage of this group is “in the system”: that is, in prison, jail, on probation or on parole? 

In Bunkie, Louisiana, for instance, I am told, few young black males have a clean record.  Why is that?

The two simple answers are, (a) because black people commit far more crimes than white people, and (b)because of racist law enforcement.  The Pew study sheds no light on this issue.

The report authors realize that Americans care as much about their taxes as they care about their safety.  Argue that safety comes with a steep price tag and you might get some defections from the tuff-on-crime consortium.

I doubt this approach will be any more effective this time than it has been in the past. 

True, big states like California and Texas are having a hard time paying for their bloated prison systems.  Minor adjustments are being made.  The cancerous growth is slowing and a few state prison systems have actually declined by a percentage point or two.  But though America is experiencing a measure of sticker shock, our love affair with mass incarceration continues unabated.

Why are we willing to spend billions of dollars on prisons and prison guards?  For the same reason we are willing to mortgage our children’s futures to military adventures in places like Viet Nam and Iraq; it makes us feel better.  If we believe that a big army and a big prison system make us safer, no price tag will be too high. 

Like all empires, America is obsessed with safety.  We spend far more on loss-prevention strategies than other nations because we have far more to lose.

Nothing will change until we focus on the direct relationship between poverty, crime and incarceration.  Politicians pass draconian laws which, if enforced, are guaranteed to fill up the prisons.  Law enforcement makes the most of these laws because it keeps the tax dollars flowing coming. 

Policy wonks understand that, althugh Americans are paying for security, they aren’t getting the goods.  Unfortunately, it is in no ones best interest (excepting a few policy wonks paid by major foundations) to make this simple point.

The war on drugs is the elephant in the room.  Our prisons are overflowing with felons because, back in the early 80s, we decided to incarcerate our way to a drug-free America.  The message wasn’t “Just say No”, the message was, “if you say Yes we will lock you up for a very, very long time.  Moreover, we will make it impossible for you to go to college or get a good job as long as you draw breath.

 Inmates go to crime school for a few years.  We dump them back on the streets without training, counseling or guidance.  There is nothing “ex” about being an ex-offender; you drag the felony designation behind you like a ball and chain. 

Desperate and disillusioned, most felons return to whatever it was that got them in trouble in the first place. Usually that involves using or selling drugs; frequently it means both.  In poor neighborhoods, it’s the only gig that pays.

The Pew study is a helpful repository of useful information, but it will have no effect on public policy.  As George H.W. Bush’s use of the Willy Horton episode made explicit, public policy is driven by narrative, by story.  As Barack Obama’s electoral success suggests, most white Americans are willing to embrace educated, articulate, upwardly mobile African Americans as fellow citizens.  But most white Americans (and a good chunk of black America) remain convinced that poor black males possess a pathological propensity for violence and crime so strong that mass incarceration is the only practical response.

Unfortunately, commercial Hip Hop music reinforces this impression. 

The civil rights generation wants to bury the n-word, but the popularity of the term on the streets is instructive.  If HBO’s The Wire is anything to go by, the n-word is the flip side of the word “citizen”.  People who embrace the n-word see themselves as existing in a world apart from the benefits and obligations of American citizenship.  Incarceration merely enhances this impression.  People who think this way are a danger to themselves and others, but what is the solution?

I’m not knocking the Pew report.  These folks know their audience, and I will probably use some of their charts in my PowerPoint presentations.  But Friends of Justice is about narrative-based advocacy: telling real-life stories as they unfold.  Change the race-and-poverty story and you change public policy.