To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice

by Bruce L. Benson

Book Overview

Traces the accelerating trend towards privatization in the criminal justice system

In contrast to government's predominant role in criminal justice today, for many centuries crime control was almost entirely private and community-based. Government police forces, prosecutors, courts, and prisons are all recent historical developments-results of a political and bureaucratic social experiment which, Bruce Benson argues, neither protects...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814713270
• ISBN13: 9780814713273
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant follow up to Benson's "The Enterprise of Law"

What I love about this book is that it is a must read for both Liberals and Conservatives alike. Benson shows step by step why our monopolized "justice" system works against real justice -- and why the poor are the most likely to suffer at its hands. What is most comforting to me (who wholeheartedly agrees with his findings) is his conclusion that whether or not people like it, the privatization of criminal justice is inevitably growing.

More timely than ever, unfortunately

In the wake of a terrible terrorist attack, various public voices are arguing for liberty-threatening countermeasures -- increases in federal power, the placement of federal marshals on aircraft, the unreasonable search and seziure of airline passengers, and so forth. Almost unnoticed and unmentioned is the fact that the terrorists succeeded in killing thousands using, apparently, no weapon more powerful than a box cutter.A handful who are aware of this salient point are claiming that airline security was lax owing to "market failure." This is supposed to relieve us of the responsibility to establish security by means that respect rights.But Bruce Benson's _To Serve and Protect_ addressed all of this several years ago -- broadly and in principle, though of course with no explicit discussion of the proper security measures for airlines to implement. What Benson provides in this volume is a thorough defense of a superficially counterintuitive claim that becomes less and less counterintuitive as time goes on: the free and private market is better, _much_ better, at providing security and criminal justice than is the government.That means that his book is, sadly, perhaps more timely now than when it was written. By a simple extrapolation of the arguments presented herein, the recent tragedies indicate, not that "private" security provisions put us at risk of "market failures," but that a government monopoly on criminal justice costs lives.Benson is also the author of the highly recommended _The Enterpise of Law_, which sets out probably the most thorough case to date that _law_ can exist without the institutions of a territorial State. This volume is in some ways a sequel, setting out a positive case as to how "private" criminal law works and why it is, consistently and in principle, superior to government regulation. (And allegations of "market failure" are specifically addressed.)Check it out. The need for Benson's arguments has never been greater at any time since its publication.

What we have to avoid !

Professor Benson's book is very interesting and excite. Good thoughts and insights in criminal justice failures. Benson advocates free market administration of crime and punishment as solution. The question in my opinion is: what we have to avoid ? Criminal justice failures or market rules ? What seems a good ideia, maybe is the wrong way and will cause more problems than solutions. Anyway, you can't be pro or against it without this excellent book.

A brilliant follow up to Benson's "The Enterprise of Law"

What I love about this book is that it is a must read for both Liberals and Conservatives alike. Benson shows step by step why our monopolized "justice" system works against real justice -- and why the poor are the most likely to suffer at its hands. What is most comforting to me (who wholeheartedly agrees with his findings) is his conclusion that whether or not people like it, the privatization of criminal justice is inevitably growing.