NCJ Number
198698
Date Published
1998
Length
395 pages
Annotation
This book describes and critiques the accelerating trend toward privatization in America's criminal justice system.
Abstract
The aim of this book is to explore the institutional circumstances under which criticisms of privatization may or may not be valid, as well as to suggest policy changes that can lead to effective and efficient achievement of justice for crime victims. Part I of the three-part presentation examines the role of private inputs into the pubic production of crime control. It notes that private firms are contracting with government units to provide an increasing array of prison, security, policing, and other criminal justice functions that have, for several decades, been performed by government bureaucracies and their employees. One chapter in Part I focuses on the benefits and pitfalls of such contracting out, allowing these arrangements to provide a benchmark to which both pure market and pure bureaucratic alternatives can be compared. Also explored are the incentives leading to the low level of private-sector involvement in arrest and prosecution, with attention to the context of an examination of the deterrent incentives that the public-sector criminal justice system produces for criminals. Part II examines fully privatized crime control, as it discusses the wide array of private activities that have developed to protect individuals and their property. One chapter explores both historical and current examples of private justice in America to demonstrate that private justice is a traditional American response to government failure in crime control. Two chapters examine the potential benefits and alleged costs of privatization in crime control and justice. Part III contains policy analysis and recommendations. One of the chapters focuses on the desirability of returning to a system that emphasizes victim restitution rather than social engineering goals such as deterrence and rehabilitation. The author contends that restitution should be the primary concern of criminal justice, based on normative goals of promoting liberty, justice, and individual responsibility. The current state of restitution in the law is discussed, along with changes that would be necessary to make restitution prominent in criminal justice policy. Chapter notes, a 432-item bibliography, and a subject index