Private Criminal Justice
How Private Parties are Enforcing Criminal Law and Transforming Our Justice System

Describes and evaluates private responses to criminal activity, including private policing, independent criminal adjudications, and vigilante actions.

Ric Simmons (Author)

9781009347136, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 October 2023

300 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.39 kg

'[The author] offers nuanced and grounded understandings of different perspectives missing in many traditional textbooks, and advocates exploring both systems in tandem to meet multiple needs. This volume will appeal to public audiences seeking insight into the criminal justice system, as well as students, scholars, and practitioners researching criminal justice, law, and public safety. Those with community-facing criminal justice roles may find the analysis especially useful in addressing community members' concerns … Highly recommended.' J. Bonnan-White, CHOICE

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.

1. Criminal justice without the state
2. A brief history of crime
3. Public failings, private opportunities
4. Private law enforcement
5 Private criminal settlements as plea bargains
6. Private criminal settlements as blackmail
7. Private adjudications
8. Private dispositions
9. Regulating private criminal justice
10. The verdict on private criminal justice.

Subject Areas: Criminal law & procedure [LNF]