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.

‘In this smart, fair-minded, and important book, Ric Simmons provides an eye-opening tour of the vast range of private services that sidestep and offer alternatives to the criminal legal system. He shows that ‘private criminal justice’ can't be assessed without understanding the problems of public criminal justice - and vice versa.’

David Alan Sklansky - Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

‘In Private Criminal Justice, Ric Simmons opens our eyes to a criminal justice system unfamiliar to most people and yet of enormous importance: the entirely private world of policing, adjudication, and punishment in the United States. These are not just vigilantes and volunteers, but also highly sophisticated actors and institutions that rival small cities in size. This timely and compelling book is a must-read, not just to understand private justice, but also to learn important lessons that can apply to our troubled public justice system.’

Elizabeth E. Joh - Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis, School of Law