"A Thug in Prison Can't Shoot Your Sister"

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).