Lockup quotas in U.S. prisons are not necessarily a tax on low crime, and may actually help maximise value for money for taxpayers

Last Thursday’s post on this blog (and research report) by In the Public Interest (ITPI) shows how U.S. private prison operators have negotiated ‘lockup quotas’ to protect their business against reductions in the prison population. It raises important questions, writes Simon Bastow, about how governments should manage such reductions and the dynamics of entrenched private-sector interests. But to say, as the authors do, that lockup quotas constitute a ‘tax on low crime’ seems like one ideological extrapolation too far. Click here to view a Google Hangout video related to this article.