In response to policy developments aiming to increase the involvement of penal voluntary organizations in criminal justice, a recent flurry of commentary has provided a marketized understanding of the penal voluntary sector and attempts to privatize it. Although this commentary has contributed significantly to the limited literature on the sector, the centrality of neoliberal policy in analysis is problematic. This article provides a critique of relevant commentary and offers a new exploration of the penal voluntary sector that extends beyond neoliberalism and marketization. A preliminary exploration of an alternative model is made, using political economy to provide a nuanced and politically enabling understanding of the role of voluntary organizations in criminal justice.