One Market We Do Not Need

One Market We Do Not Need

Professor Volokh is right that American prisons are considered to be “low quality,” and that they suffer from “high violence rates, bad medical care, [and] overuse of highly punitive measures like administrative segregation . . . .” But his proposed solution—a system of “prison vouchers” that would permit prisoners to choose their facilities and thus create a market for prison services—would provide only an illusion of choice. Even worse, such a system runs the risk of strengthening the self‐interested forces that drive our overgrown system of incarceration. Just when it seems that the United States may be turning a corner, Professor Volokh's “prison vouchers” proposal would create a market that we do not need.

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