Is there a more complicated and delicate matter of advocacy than the Boston black community’s fight against a “three-strikes” crime bill?

In essence, the heart of their argument against putting three-time felony losers away, with no chance of parole, is that the legislation would impact too high a percentage of minorities.

Many “conservatives” who appreciate getting “tough on crime,” also have raised concerns about the three-strikes policy, centered largely on prison cost and overcrowding.

But the emotional tug of black leaders cannot be denied, when their troubling argument is, to a certain degree, aimed at their own community.

Not only is there a concession here that repeat offenders may be over-represented in minority populations, but black leaders must also cope with the fact that many repeat offenders live in and degrade the very neighborhoods where minorities are likely to live.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers III, a cofounder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, summed up the minority lobbying stance with his plea for clergy to ponder the “financial and moral costs” of the three-strikes strategy.

Minority activists will certainly seize on the “financial cost” issue, if that helps get them through the day, but, again, the strength of their emotional appeal at the State House is the theme that a disproportionate share of the locked-up types will be minorities.

Nationwide, the three-strikes initiative generally begins with an unspeakable crime committed by some creature out on parole. In Massachusetts, it was the killing of a police officer by a parolee with the kind of record that suggests you would never have invited him home to meet Mom.

Difficult Debate

But the dirty little secret of three-strikes enthusiasm is that it generally becomes most popular when the parolee doesn’t stick to his own kind – that is, when he ventures out of the scary neighborhood from whence he came.

While one would hope that “public health and safety” would be high on the list of government priorities, politicians have become squeamish over the costs of lengthening prison terms for bad little boys and girls, unless they have done something so awful that it would be embarrassing to let them out “early.” The debate isn’t easy.

An uneasy coalition of mushy social service types and hard-core Libertarians make the case for de-regulating many “non-violent” (generally drug-related) crimes, in an effort to cull the herd of prisoners. Often, the lefty compassionate crowd prefers “rehabilitation” to years and years of incarceration.

An impressive collection of academics and politicians favor putting criminals away because, well, then they aren’t committing any more crimes.

One of the more articulate and intelligent of that crowd for many years has been James Q. Wilson, long-time Harvard professor, now at Boston College and the American Enterprise Institute, who has offered up rather compelling research and rhetoric in defense of imprisoning the bad guys – and keeping them there.

“The typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not including drug offenses),” he wrote in a 2008 Los Angeles Times essay. “You cannot make an argument about the cost of prisons without taking into account the benefit of prisons.”

Wilson was the co-author of the famous 1982 book “Broken Windows,” which advocated a police crackdown on every crime, no matter how minor, to bring some relief from the disorder of urban nightmares. A later effort in the 1990s, “Fixing Broken Windows,” suggested that the same police aggression be focused on crime prevention.

Black community leaders in Boston made a clever strategic decision to engage white, suburban clergy to help them de-rail the three-strikes legislation. That eases the jarring public relations image of blacks being worried about black criminals being punished.

The challenge for all sides is the whole murky business of which felonies would be sufficiently scary as to prompt a three-strikes lockup forever – and an honest appraisal of both the quality and accountability that must exist in an effective parole system.

Will three-strikes pass this year in Massachusetts? Probably not. Uncertainty will play a part, but also, there should be some credit given for minority leaders willing to say something just a bit embarrassing to make their point.