Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian, and anti-political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, the non-aggression principle, free markets and the right-libertarian interpretation of self-ownership, which extends the concept to include control of private property as part of the self. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of services and goods. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society, the system of private property would still exist and be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies selected by customers which would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police. According to many anti-capitalist modern anarchist schools of thought, the word "anarchy" is sometimes considered to be the antithesis of hierarchy, therefore, "anarcho-capitalism" is sometimes considered to be a term with differences philosophically to what they personally consider to be true anarchism, as an Anarcho-Capitalist society would inherently contain hierarchy – though said hierarchy is largely considered consensual. This point is typically responded to by Anarcho-Capitalists by pointing out that etymologically, "anarchy" simply means "the absence of government," and by arguing that the stark difference between "government" and "governance" be considered; thus, many believe the philosophy's common name is indeed consistent, as it promotes private governance, but is vehemently anti-government.
"I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights." -Murray Rothbard in Society Without a State
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. Proponents of the free market as a normative ideal contrast it with a regulated market, in which a government intervenes in supply and demand by means of various methods such as taxes or regulations. In an idealized free market economy, prices for goods and services are set solely by the bids and offers of the participants.
The Machinery of Freedom is a nonfiction book by David D. Friedman that advocates an anarcho-capitalist society from a consequentialist perspective.
More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John R. Lott Jr. that says violent crime rates go down when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 29 years from 1977 to 2005. Each edition of the book was refereed by the University of Chicago Press. The book examines city, county and state level data from the entire United States and measures the impact of 13 different types of gun control laws on crime rates. The book expands on an earlier study published in 1997 by Lott and his co-author David Mustard in The Journal of Legal Studies and by Lott and his co-author John Whitley in The Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001.
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other crimes, and moral support for victims. The primary institutions of the criminal justice system are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts and the prisons system.
Restorative justice is an approach to justice where one of the responses to a crime is to organize a meeting between the victim and the offender, sometimes with representatives of the wider community. The goal is for them to share their experience of what happened, to discuss who was harmed by the crime and how, and to create a consensus for what the offender can do to repair the harm from the offense. This may include a payment of money given from the offender to the victim, apologies and other amends, and other actions to compensate those affected and to prevent the offender from causing future harm.
Polycentric law is a theoretical legal structure in which "providers" of legal systems compete or overlap in a given jurisdiction, as opposed to monopolistic statutory law according to which there is a sole provider of law for each jurisdiction. Devolution of this monopoly occurs by the principle of jurisprudence in which they rule according to higher law.
Throughout the history of criminal justice, evolving forms of punishment, added rights for offenders and victims, and policing reforms have reflected changing customs, political ideals, and economic conditions.
The feminist school of criminology is a school of criminology developed in the late 1960s and into the 1970s as a reaction to the general disregard and discrimination of women in the traditional study of crime. It is the view of the feminist school of criminology that a majority of criminological theories were developed through studies on male subjects and focused on male criminality, and that criminologists often would "add women and stir" rather than develop separate theories on female criminality.
A private defense agency (PDA) is a theoretical enterprise which would provide personal protection and military defense services to individuals who would pay for its services. PDAs are advocated in anarcho-capitalism as a way of enforcing the system of private property.
Bruce L. Benson is an American academic economist who is recognized as an authority on law and economics and a major exponent of anarcho-capitalist legal theory. He is chair of the department of economics, DeVoe L. Moore Professor, distinguished research professor and courtesy professor of law at Florida State University and the recipient of the 2006 Adam Smith Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and has recently been a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the Czech Republic, visiting professor at the university de Paris Pantheonon Assas, a Property-and-Environment-Research-Center Julian Simon Fellow, and visiting research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Private police or special police are law enforcement bodies that are owned or controlled by non-governmental entities. Additionally, the term can refer to an off-duty police officer while working for a private entity, providing security, or otherwise law enforcement-related services. These officers do have power to uphold the laws under the discretion of the private company.
Incapacitation in the context of criminal sentencing philosophy is one of the functions of punishment. It involves capital punishment, sending an offender to prison, or possibly restricting their freedom in the community, to protect society and prevent that person from committing further crimes. Incarceration, as the primary mechanism for incapacitation, is also used as to try to deter future offending.
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society is an Independent Institute-published book, edited by David T. Beito, about communities with private provision of municipal services. Contributors include Stephen Davies, Daniel B. Klein, Robert C. Arne, Bruce L. Benson, David G. Green, James Tooley, Fred E. Foldvary, Donald J. Boudreaux, Randall G. Holcombe, Robert H. Nelson, Spencer H. MacCallum, and Alexander Tabarrok. It covers the topics of privatized provision of urban infrastructure, roads, planning, police, charity, medical care, education, and commercial regulation, particularly through examination of historical examples of this provision.
The Macdaniel affair or Macdaniel scandal was a political scandal in the United Kingdom. In 1754, a group of bounty hunters, led by Stephen MacDaniel, were revealed to have been prosecuting innocent men to their deaths in England in order to collect reward money from bounties. The scandal was an unintended consequence of the British government offering rewards for the capture of criminals, as before those rewards were instituted, thief-takers depended primarily on privately funded rewards from victims seeking return of stolen property or other restitution. The Macdaniel affair formed part of the impetus for the formation of salaried public police forces, who did not depend on rewards, to combat crime in the country.
The Midtown Community Court is a part of the New York City Criminal Court that focuses on quality-of-life offenses, such as prostitution, shoplifting, farebeating and vandalism, with a view toward rehabilitation instead of punishment. For example, judges may order offenders to perform community service and refer them to such social services as drug treatment, mental health counseling, and job training.
Marsy's Law, the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, enacted by voters as Proposition 9 through the initiative process in the November 2008 general election, is a controversial amendment to the state's constitution and certain penal code sections. The act protects and expands the legal rights of victims of crime to include 17 rights in the judicial process, including the right to legal standing, protection from the defendant, notification of all court proceedings, and restitution, as well as granting parole boards far greater powers to deny inmates parole. Critics allege that the law unconstitutionally restricts defendant's rights by allowing prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence under certain circumstances, and harms victims by restricting their rights to discovery, depositions, and interviews. Passage of this law in California led to the passage of similar laws in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio and Wisconsin, and efforts to pass similar laws in Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania. In November 2017, Marsy's Law was found to be unconstitutional and void in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Montana for violating that state's procedure for amending the Montana Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as Montana under its own state constitution in 2021.
A rehabilitation policy within criminology, is one intending to reform criminals rather than punish them and/or segregate them from the greater community.
Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, and sentencing.
Das Verbrechen als soziale Erscheinung; Grundzüge der Kriminal-Sociologie was written by Enrico Ferri and originally published in 1884, but has undergone several revisions since then. It deals with Ferri's perspective on criminal sociology and problems of penology. The book is known as Ferri’s most important work and represents the positive school of criminology.
