“Against Prosecutors” and a lot of notable responses thereto

I recall reading a few years ago, but maybe not blogging about, I. Bennett Capers provocative 2020 essay titled simply “Against Prosecutors.”  Here is part of the essay’s introduction:

What would it mean to turn away from public prosecutors and not rely on the criminal justice system as the first responder to address social ills, such as mental illness and poverty (two of the main drivers of our prison industrial complex)?  More radically, what would it mean to turn away from state-controlled prosecution as the primary way to address crime? What would it mean to replace a system where prosecutors hold a monopoly in deciding which cases are worthy of pursuit with a system in which “we the people,” including those of us who have traditionally had little power, would be empowered to seek and achieve justice ourselves?

This Article attempts to answer these questions. It begins in Part I with the enormous, monopolistic power public prosecutors wield.  But this power is not inevitable. Indeed, public prosecutors are not even inevitable. This is the main point of Part II, which surfaces the rarely discussed history of criminal prosecutions in this country before the advent of the public prosecutor, when private prosecutions were the norm and in a very real sense criminal prosecutions belonged to “the people.”  Part II then demonstrates that our history of private prosecutions and the turn to public prosecutions is more than just a curious footnote, as this very history has, in turn, shaped criminal law and justice as we know it. Part III, in many ways the core of this Article, makes the argument for turning away from public prosecutors and restoring prosecution to the people.  It also returns to the question that motivates this Article: what benefits might accrue if victims had the option to pursue criminal charges through private prosecution or public prosecution? Part III argues there would be several benefits, including democratizing criminal justice and, quite possibly, reducing mass incarceration.

This essay is fresh in mind in part because I just saw an on-line symposium in which seven scholars have written their own essays in response (and with the author providing a final word). Here are links to these new works:

Angela J. Davis, “The Perils of Private Prosecutions“

Benjamin Levin, “Victims’ Rights Revisited“

Carolyn B. Ramsey, “Against Domestic Violence: Public and Private Prosecution of Batterers“

Corey Rayburn Yung, “Private Prosecution of Rape“

Jeffrey Bellin, “A World Without Prosecutors“

Jenia I. Turner, “Victims as a Check on Prosecutors: A Comparative Assessment“

Roger A. Fairfax Jr.. “For Grand Juries“

I. Bennett Capers, “Still Against Prosecutors“