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During warm season of 2018, independent detective Simon Davison got a call from a woman claiming her ex- boyfriend had stolen £10,000 from her. The woman, a traffic manager at a municipal authority, constituted an unusual client for Davison. As the director of investigations at a crisis consultancy in London, Davison typically works for cautious companies and wealthy individuals. A former police detective, Davison has retrieved stolen cryptocurrency, uncovered secret properties owned by bankrupt business people and tracked down fraudsters operating from Cyprus.

Understanding Private Prosecutions

Davison's focus lies in non-state legal actions, a lesser-known field of law that enables victims to pay for their own legal recourse. These legal matters are processed in the identical courts operated by state legal authorities for England and Wales, and they can carry the equivalent prison sentences for defendants. "We basically mirror the procedure between law enforcement and public prosecutors," Davison stated. The key difference is that police officers are agents of the state, whereas people contact Davison when government authorities cannot provide help.

A Case of Monetary Fraud

Carol's ex-boyfriend, Jiro Wilson, had convinced her to provide him money to fund a company he was establishing. In return, Wilson promised her shares in his new firm. "Looking back, I could see how naive I was to trust him," Carol later recalled in a witness statement. "He would often call me suspicious, and definitely made me feel this way when I thought he was seeing other women."

One evening, while secretly looking through Wilson's phone, she recorded the numbers of other women in his address book, and began messaging them in secret. To Carol's shock, three women informed her that Wilson had also "borrowed" thousands of pounds from them. Carol created a WhatsApp group, and organized to meet the women at one of their homes in Exeter. The four women found that each had been duped in the same manner. "He was a repellent narcissist," one of them commented. In total, Wilson had taken £46,000 from them, promising they would reap the benefits of investing in his company. He spent the money on escorts, dining out and motorbikes.

When Police Shows Minimal Response

Carol notified Wilson's financial crime to the police, who directed her to the fraud reporting service, which provided her a reference number and never contacted her again. The three other women also were unable to engage law enforcement in their case. More than recovering their money, the women desired justice. One approached a solicitor in Exeter called Jeremy Asher. "It was very clear that this was a significant fraud perpetrated by a very devious, calculating individual," Asher recalled. "But the police weren't interested." Asher advised the women to bring a private prosecution. Doing so would be expensive – potentially tens of thousands of pounds – but their case was so compelling that Asher said the court would likely repay their costs. So the women cobbled together the money, and on Asher's recommendation, Carol contacted Davison, the private investigator.

Developing the Legal Action

As he investigated the case, Davison found that Wilson also appeared to have manipulated his VAT returns. The judge who presided over the private prosecution in December 2020 determined Wilson's offences were potentially so serious that public prosecutors should take over the case. State legal authorities passed the case to the police, who discovered that Wilson had submitted nearly £250,000 in false VAT returns, and had stolen a additional £50,000 from a government loan scheme. On 13 June 2023, Wilson admitted guilt to seven counts of fraud at Exeter crown court. A judge gave him to six years in prison and characterized him as a "deceitful parasite."

Increasing Trend of Non-Government Legal Actions

Had the police taken Carol and the other women's initial allegations more seriously, a private prosecution would never have been necessary. But their experience is not rare. The result is that over the past decade, a parallel criminal justice system has emerged in England and Wales, operated by lawyers who specialise in privately prosecuting crimes, and ex- police officers who examine them. Government statistics on private prosecutions are limited, but in 2024 they represented a quarter of all cases in magistrates courts in England and Wales. According to one law firm, between 2016 and 2021 the number of private prosecutions increased significantly. "Fifteen years ago, they were very rare," said a barrister who focuses in white-collar crime. Since then, "it's been like the stock market going up. It's just a vertical line."

Availability and Expense Concerns

Some view these prosecutions as a solution to shrinking state budgets, and a method to obtain justice when all other routes have failed. But the risk is that affluent victims can afford something denied to others. A defence barrister noted that, in his experience, private prosecutions were typically brought by "people who can afford to spend a million, or a couple of million, if it comes to it." The cost of investigating complex cases puts such prosecutions out of reach of most ordinary people. "As it stands, they fill a gap in name only," said a solicitor at a City law firm. "If you really wanted to close that gap, the best way to do it would be by adequately funding the criminal justice system."

Fraud Cases and Police Response

In recent years, fraud has only grown. In England and Wales, it increased by 31% in 2024 alone. Yet the police have, as a rule, shown little interest in tackling it. Several former police officers noted that it was seen as boring. "There's a real focus towards action. Catching a burglar and chasing them down the street," said a former detective chief inspector. Whereas with fraud cases, "you need someone who is willing to go through a thousand pages of a spreadsheet." Few people join the police to pore over Microsoft Excel documents. As one officer put it in a 2019 report, "Fraud doesn't bang, bleed or shout."

Existing Systems and Their Current Limitations

The main contact point for victims is the national hotline, Action Fraud, which was founded in 2009. When a retired sergeant used to work at a control room logging emergency calls, he would often direct callers to Action Fraud. "We thought, these specialists are excellent. They've got adequate resources, they're knowledgeable," he remembered. "You're not talking about some local officer who has no idea."

In reality, Action Fraud is a call centre whose day-to-day running was, until 2019, outsourced to a private US company that employed call handlers who received just two weeks of training and were paid close to the minimum wage. When an undercover reporter worked at Action Fraud in 2019, they found staff taking calls from victims while scrolling through their phones and engaging in distracting activities. Some of their managers mocked fraud victims as "naive individuals."

Monetary Aspects of Non-Government Legal Actions

While victims cover the upfront costs of private prosecutions, many of their expenses are ultimately funded by taxpayers, whether or not their case is successful. Every time a firm wraps up a private prosecution, they ask the judge to reimburse them from central funds, a pot of public funds that covers the costs incurred in criminal prosecutions. The appropriate government unit then reviews the firm's application and decides how much money they get back. "It's not a blank cheque," said one legal expert. "But in my experience, you typically get 80% or 90% of your costs reimbursed." Firms specializing in private prosecutions charge a higher hourly rate than public prosecutors, so private prosecutions "almost inevitably cost the state much more," one judge noted in a 2014 ruling. According to available data, the government has paid out significant sums to cover private prosecution fees in recent years.

Potential Improper Use and Abuse

Private prosecutions can also be effective weapons: some legal experts mentioned having seen cases where wealthy people "try to use private prosecutions just as a way of bullying someone, basically." Rail companies have been particularly adept at criminalising people for minor rule-breaking in recent years, fast-tracking draconian prosecutions through streamlined procedures. Defendants receive a letter detailing a charge, to which they must respond within 21 days. If they don't respond (because the letter gets lost in the post, for example), they can be tried and sentenced by a single magistrate, who can criminally convict them without a court hearing, using only minimal evidence.

Future Changes and Factors

Despite the growing demand for this shadow justice system, some people in the industry worry about its future sustainability. Government suggestions currently making their way through parliament contain details that could significantly affect the entire business model. It proposes that lawyers should only be awarded "adequate" costs from central funds. The proposal doesn't state how much would count as "reasonably sufficient," but in theory it could mean that highly paid lawyers would suddenly find themselves earning lower rates.

Earlier this year, government authorities took a negative view of private prosecutors in a consultation paper, alleging that some of them had "acted unlawfully, improperly and well below the standards the public expects." Its main target was an organization that brought numerous successful private prosecutions against its operators between 1991 and 2015, sending innocent employees to prison for theft and fraud. In theory, it should be possible to distinguish between such scandals and justified cases, since public prosecutors can put a stop to any private prosecution. In practice, they are too overstretched to monitor every case.

Ethical Considerations and Societal Concern

If such prosecutions provoke a fundamental unease, it can be because they assume a power that many people think should belong to the state. "How do we feel about the state effectively lending the keys to its tanks to a private individual, and saying, you can have fun with these for a little while?" said a defence barrister. Private prosecutors emphasize that they apply the same public interest test as the state does when deciding whether to prosecute. But unlike public prosecutors, who receive a salary regardless of whether they prosecute a case, private firms get paid to bring cases, not turn them down.

"The old thing that used to be said about public prosecutors was that they enjoy no victories and suffer no defeats," noted a former director of public prosecutions. "If you're a private law firm and your whole business model depends on bringing private prosecutions, you want to win. Your business model is: we will get you a conviction."

Summary

If the government reduces the fees that private prosecutors can claim back from the state, the industry that has thrived in the aftermath of budget cuts will certainly decline. So long as the government continues to underfund the criminal justice system of adequate funding, however, the demand for such alternatives will persist. During research, multiple legal experts mentioned the health service. They drew a parallel between private prosecutions and the clinics and surgeries that improvise expensive solutions to the problem of a decrepit public institution. In both instances, the solution only compounds the problem: when some people can buy their own criminal cases or medical treatments, they have fewer reasons to invest in the idea of improving these things for everyone else.