An eye-opening look at the explosion in the prison population around the country by the Pew Center on the States, the report paints a bleak picture of a nation whose priorities have gone haywire: spending more and more money locking people up - the number is now up to one in every 100 adults in American behind bars.

What does it say about us that this country now incarcerates more people, and has spent more on corrections than any other country in the world? That includes China and Russia.

Or that one in nine black men 20-34 years of age is in prison, one in 36 Hispanic men and one in 100 black women 35-39?

What does it say that we now spend 60 cents on corrections for every dollar we spend on education?

Or that larger and larger percentages of state workforces are devoted to prison work, creating a state-sponsored "prison industrial complex" that costs the country $44 billion a year?

All we know is that this trend has a huge impact not only on the country, but in our city. For example, the redeployment and beefing up of the police force that citizens have been calling for in this city as a response to the homicide problem has a direct impact on our prison costs. But unless we acknowledge that, fighting crime is also going to mean fighting to keep our head above water, financially. And the city has far too many other pressing concerns to add more prisons to the list.

Pew has tracked these numbers for about two years. And implicit in their "One in 100" report is that the prison problem has been driven by policy, not by a crime-filled environment.

The problem is not just a social one. Prisons - especially those with increasingly aging and sick populations - are hugely expensive, and get more so all the time.

The report recommends a change in direction in a few areas: shorter stays, improved probation and parole policies, jobs and social services for ex-offenders, and alternative sentences - not jail time - for low-level offenders.

And one faint light in this darkness is that Philadelphia is not doing badly on many of these counts.

Mayor Nutter has instituted the Office for the Re-entry of Ex-Offenders, and the city has implemented Councilman Wilson Goode's Philadelphia Re-entry Employment Program (PREP) that gives a $10,000 tax credit to employers who hire ex-offenders.

CITY COUNCIL has held hearings on how to improve the city's Probation and Parole Department, including using kiosks where parolees could check in electronically without a probation officer.

But in both Philadelphia and the nation, there are too many people convicted of low-level crimes and technical violations who clog up the judicial system. And too many ex-offenders go through prisons revolving doors.

Stiff prison sentences and inflexible judicial policies may make us appear tough, but don't reduce crime or protect the public. They do, however, drive up correction costs.

We don't have to be a country that has handcuffed its future to growing prisons and prison populations. The report notes that Texas, Kansas and Nevada are making notable changes. Leaders at the local and state levels can turn this situation around. We call on ours to start working. *