As research indicates, criminologists have become increasingly interested in the ways in which crime control policies arise and cross national borders and what occurs when these policies travel. To satisfy this interest, this paper focuses on a specific element: the emergence of United States penal policy developments in the United Kingdom, as well as the processes by which these have come about. The paper has two key objectives: (1) help to address the relative paucity of studies of policymaking in the arena of criminal justice and (2) to reemphasize the notion of political agency within considerations of penal-policy formulation. Divided into four main sections, the paper first examines what is meant by policy in this context, highlighting the dimensions of process and levels. The second section turns to the experience of prison privatization in the United Kingdom and the United States. Section three explores the similarities and differences in the process and substance of policy change in both countries. The paper concludes with some observations about what light this case study sheds on the broader issues. One such observation is that there was the ability to distinguish broad similarities in the substance of the policy of prison privatization in the United States and the United Kingdom, in terms of the requirement for legislative change and the administrative instruments of private contracting. Where the political conditions are right, policy ideas can emerge, travel, and be implemented globally in the area of private prisons. References