Private Criminal Justice

Significant amounts of criminal activity are detected by private police and many criminal disputes are settled through informal agreements between parties, or in adjudicative procedures run by private institutions. This book examines the vast private criminal justice system to reveal lessons for public criminal justice reform.

---

The United States is in the midst of a significant re-evaluation of its criminal justice system, with increasing calls for reforming or defunding the police and efforts to curb mass incarceration. But focusing on the public criminal justice system paints an incomplete picture of how we address criminal activity. In Private Criminal Justice, Ric Simmons shows how significant amounts of criminal activity are detected by private police and how many disputes are settled, not in public courts, but through informal agreements between the victim and the accused or through adjudicative procedures run by private institutions. In this timely and eye-opening book, Simmons examines the vast, diverse, and under-appreciated private criminal justice system, suggesting reforms that can make these private responses more fair and revealing lessons the private criminal justice system can teach reformers of the public criminal justice system.