This chapter charts the most recent history of the private criminal justice system, from its lowest point of influence in the 1960s to modern times, when private police outnumber their public counterparts by almost a two-to-one margin. It also notes that private police are distinctive not just because of their sheer number but because of the goals that they seek to achieve – which are essentially the goals of the client who is paying them or the goals of the neighborhood or volunteer associaton that they represent. The chapter examines not only paid private police but also volunteer private police, such as the Guardian Angels, the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, neighborhood watch programs, and “white hat” hackers.The chapter concludes by pointing out the relatively low level of regulation that applies to private police and by examining the pros and cons of using private police to detect and apprehend criminals.

This chapter introduces the concept of the private criminal justice system, which comprises every private response to alleged criminal activity. It gives examples of private law enforcement, private criminal settlements, private criminal adjudications, and private dispositions. It argues that the private criminal justice system is the predominant way in which our society responds to crime. Finally, the chapter sets out the goals of the book: (1) to describe the private criminal justice system, which has been understudied in the literature; (2) to explain why it has become so prevalent in society; and (3) to evaluate the social desirability of different aspects of the system.

This chapter reviews the four primary stages of private criminal justice – enforcement, settlement, adjudication, and punishment – and evaluates potential legal reforms to optimize the benefits and minimize the costs of the private criminal justice system. For the enforcement stage, the chapter rejects current attempts to subject private police to the constitutional rules that regulate public police, and instead recommends decreasing the burdens of filing a civil lawsuit against private police who violate the law. For the settlement stage, the chapter proposes legalizing criminal settlements and abolishing most “duty to report” laws. For the adjudicative stage, the chapter recommends a flexible standard of due process along with a robust privilege for private adjudicators and atraining and licensing scheme. For the punishment stage, the chapter again argues in favor of increased civil liability, but argues against changing the definition of self-defense used by most jurisdictions.

Security is often a non-excludable public good. On the one hand, it benefits the people who buy it; on the other, it also benefits those who live near the people who buy it. It benefits those neighbors even if they refuse to share in the cost of the security themselves. Security also entails economies of scale. In part because of the positive externalities involved, people economize when they purchase security together. Rather than each pay to protect him- or herself, they save resources if they purchase their security together.

This chapter deals with civilian private security in relation to public police. It first elaborates, in Section 13.2, on the specific legal norms that govern public and private security personnel and shows that the rise of private security is not the outcome of privatization in the usual sense of the term. It proceeds, in Section 13.3, to present some facts on private security, a large and fast-growing industry in many countries. Sections 13.4 and 13.5 deal with the sources of the demand for private security and its impact on security. We show that this impact is conceptually different from that of public police in a constitutional rule of law state. Private security aims at achieving efficient levels of losses from crime. Public police aim at an equal protection of citizens against crimes. The different objectives have different consequences for security and for the wealth distribution of citizens.