To browse Academia. On March 15, , the indicted, impeached, and disgraced two-term elected Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, reported to a federal prison in Littleton, Colorado, to serve a year prison term. This single date marks the end of a manipulated public spectacle that "played out" for nearly a decade since Blagojevich first ran for governor. States' efforts to provide law and order can be counterproductive: mass incarceration policies, while incapacitating and deterring individual criminals, can simultaneously strengthen collective criminal networks.
Prison gangs, by promising rewards and punishments inside prison to those who anticipate incarceration, can control criminal activity on the street. A formal model reveals that common crime-reduction policies, by making incarceration more likely and sentences harsher, can increase prison gangs' power over street-level actors.
Leading cases from across the Americas corroborate these predictions: periods of sharply rising incarceration, partly driven by anti-gang laws, preceded qualitative leaps in prison-gang projection of power onto the street.
Prison gangs use their capacity to project power not only for criminal governance, but to orchestrate violenceβor intentionally curtail itβproviding them critical leverage over the state. Thus, even if increased incarceration reduces crime rates, it may do so by strengthening prison-gang power at the expense of state authority.
Perhaps most telling is the view of Professor Joseph Hoffman, someone who has devoted enormous time and energy to death penalty reform, spearheading death penalty reform efforts in both Illinois and Indiana and serving as Co-Chair and Reporter for the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Capital Punishment.
