The Humanitarian Possibilities of Prison Vouchers
Abstract
School vouchers have been proposed as a way of bypassing the political pathologies of school reform and making schools better by transforming students and their parents into consumers. What if we did the same for prisons—instituted a system under which convicted criminals could choose which prison to go to rather than being assigned by a Department of Corrections bureaucrat?
Would prison vouchers be a good idea? I canvass two sets of po-tential counterarguments. First, “market failure” arguments hold that, because of informational or other problems, prisoner choice would not succeed in improving prison quality. Second, “market success” arguments hold that prison choice would improve prison quality too well, satisfying inmate preferences that are socially undesirable or diluting the deterrent value of prison. Ultimately, even if these counterarguments have some force, prison vouchers may still be a good idea if they are outweighed by prisons’ improvements along desirable dimensions.
I conclude with thoughts about the value of prison vouchers as a thought experiment, and their political feasibility.