“A Thug in Prison Can't Shoot Your Sister”

• Date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Todd R. Clear
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12202

POLICY ESSAY

DOWNSIZING PRISONS

“A Thug in Prison Can’t Shoot Your Sister”

ToddR. Clear

Rutgers University

The idea “A thug in prison can’t shoot your sister” stands as a kind of anthem of

the get tough movement. The phrase was famously called Wattenberg’s Law by

John DiIulio in 1995 after conservative commentator Ben Wattenberg. It is one

of those simple sayings that captures a seemingly obvious truth: When a person gets put

behind bars, the crimes that person would have committed are prevented. Wattenberg’s

Law expresses a down-to-earth, no-nonsense theory of incapacitation that has undergirded

a generation-long growth in the use of imprisonment, starting in the 1970s and continuing

for approximately 40 years. It is an evidentiary claim, as Wattenberg later bluntly asserted,

that “incapacitation works” (1999).

How, then, can California release more than 27,000 people from its prison system

with so little discernable impact on crime? Wouldn’t all those thugs be out there mugging

everyone’s sisters? Apparently not. Does Wattenberg’s Law need to be rewritten?

It is complicated. The truth is that the 27,000 releasees are not really “out there.”

California’s Public Safety Realignment Initiative reduced its prison population by reallo-

cating people under correctional control in the state’s prison system to local correctional

authorities—jails and probation. Some local authorities used confinement more than oth-

ers. But as Jody Sundt, Emily Salisbury, and Mark Harmon (2016, this issue) make clear,

the amount of confinement has no more than a small impact on the number of crimes

local areas experience. The state’s bloated prison system is an unimaginative, blunt penal

mechanism. In contrast, local correctional authorities have exhibited greater ingenuity in

the way they have managed correctional populations. And now we know that the difference

in correctional methods has had limited impact on public safety.

The “thug in prison” symbolism is misleading in important ways. If California has

had little new crime as a result of reassigning so many people from its prison system to

other correctional forms, maybe Wattenberg should have said, “A thug under correctional

Direct correspondence to Todd R. Clear, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, Center for Law and Justice,

Rutgers University—Newark, 123 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102 (e-mail: tclear@rutgers.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12202 C2016 American Society of Criminology 343

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 2