Following a number of high profile escapes during the 1990s, policymakers in the Dutch Prison Service and in the Prison Service of England and Wales faced stark choices about how to house their highest risk offenders. They made those choices in the spotlight of publicity and under pressure from politicians and the press. In this article we seek to present the choices made in the light of the respective histories of the two systems by using a framework drawn from the literature on public policy formation. Our aim is not so much to develop or test hypotheses about policy formation, but rather to try to understand two things: first, how these particular policies compare with so-called supermax solutions developed in the United States and second, why policymakers decided to choose one policy option rather than the other. Table, notes, and references (Published Abstract)