Vol. 9 No. 10 (October 1999) pp. 415-416.
TO SERVE AND PROTECT: PRIVATIZATION AND COMMUNITY IN CRIMINAL
JUSTICE by Bruce L. Benson. New York and London: New York
University Press, 1998. 416 pp. Cloth $37.50.
Reviewed by Ruth Ann Strickland, Department of Political Science
and Criminal Justice, Appalachian State University.
Given the political climate following the 1994
congressional and gubernatorial elections, Bruce Benson, in TO
SERVE AND PROTECT, contends that the time might be right for
greater private sector involvement in crime control activities.
Indeed, he argues, private-public partnerships are more
pervasive and more beneficial than commonly believed. Using
microeconomic theory, Benson analyzes whether the claims of
critics of privatization are valid, especially the claim the
for-profit businesses will cut corners and produce a lower
quality service to make greater profits.
Contracting out (or partial privatization) of policing,
security, corrections and court-related law enforcement
services, although limited when compared to public sector
provision of the same services, has expanded in scope and
numbers in the last 25 years. In an examination of the potential
benefits and pitfalls of contracting out, Benson concludes that
contracting out typical government services to private
businesses reduces costs and may enhance quality of services,
depending on whether the contracting out process was competitive
or noncompetitive (meaning the process was influenced by
bribery, corruption, or overt political maneuvers).
Asking why more victims don't report crime, Benson cites
the well-known literature about reasons for lack of victim
cooperation with police and prosecutors. Data on probability of
arrest, probability of prosecution, dismissals, probability of
conviction and likelihood of punishment indicate that victims
have good reason to question the efficacy of the criminal
justice system. The author notes the rise of more voluntary
group actions against crime and greater private spending for
crime control. Although successfully making the case for why
victims are turning to private alternatives, a much weaker case
is made for why complete privatization is better than simply
increasing public-private partnerships in all areas of criminal
justice.
In Chapter 7, Benson presents very sketchy evidence that
"complete privatization" works well and could be a substitute
for public justice. He fails to present evidence about the
limited ability of the private sector to address the victim
concerns he discusses in Chapter 4, and he does not present any
systematic data that indicate that the private sector has been
more successful in all the areas that lead to lack of victim
cooperation in the public sector.
Unfortunately, it is hard to measure the independent
effects of privatization on crime control outcomes. Usually,
both public and private sector approaches are employed. In such
instances, separating out the positive and negative effects of
either public sector or private sector initiatives is
Page 416 begins here
very difficult, if not impossible. In my opinion, he makes a
very good argument for relying more on contracting out and using
more privatization but not for complete privatization.
In the last chapter, Benson makes several recommendations,
including more crime prevention watching by citizens in their
communities, more community policing, increasing the use of
private security, eliminating licenses and other regulatory
restrictions on private security markets, ending publicly
supervised pretrial release programs, encouraging more private
prosecutions, privatizing indigent defense, civil remedies
against police who violate constitutional rights of citizens,
creating private courts with a focus on restitution, making
criminals "pay" for their crimes through a commercial bail
system and marketing prisoner's labor. Other subsidiary
suggestions accompany these recommendations with explanations of
how they might be implemented.
Each recommendation is discussed in some detail and fit
together to form Benson's vision of a utopian private justice
system. He anticipates "considerable political resistance" to
such reforms, and he argues "crime can actually be relatively
effectively controlled through the interactions of private
buyers and sellers and through various voluntary cooperative
arrangements" (p. 315). He submits that one purpose of his book
is to give a road map to victims' advocacy groups that they
might use to create a criminal justice system more responsively
to the "desires of individual crime victims." We must not
forget, as we read this book, that it is a criminal justice
system, not a victim justice system. It provides a "collective"
good that may create some disjuncture between the whims and
desires of individual crime victims and overall societal well-
being. In my opinion, somewhere along the way in this
libertarian treatise the author loses sight of this. Well
written and provocative, it should be read by criminal justice
professionals and academicians with the perspective that he
offers some valid criticisms of the public sector's handling of
criminal justice and offers some recommendations that warrant
consideration.
Copyright 1999