All 30 Republican governors elected or re-elected in 1994 promised to get tough on crime. Most, like George Pataki of New York, are keeping their word. But several, like Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, who has said he would build no more prisons, are quietly promoting plans to put more convicted criminals back on the streets. But if the question is how to restrain known convicted criminals from murdering, raping, robbing, assaulting and stealing, then incarceration is a solution, and a highly cost-effective one.
Imprisonment punishes offenders and expresses society's moral disapproval.
Prisoners get drug treatment and education. All four benefits count. Increased incarceration explains part of the drop in crime in New York and other cities. In two Brookings Institution studies, in 1991 and 1995, the Harvard economist Anne Piehl and I found that prisoners in New Jersey and Wisconsin committed an average of 12 crimes a year when free, excluding all drug crimes. Studies by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 94 percent of state prisoners in 1991 had committed a violent crime or been incarcerated or on probation before.