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During the summer months of 2018, private investigator Simon Davison received a phone call from a woman stating her former boyfriend had appropriated £10,000 from her. Carol, a traffic manager at a local council, represented an unusual client for Davison. As the director of investigations at a crisis consultancy in London, Davison usually works for cautious companies and wealthy individuals. Previously a police detective, Davison has retrieved stolen cryptocurrency, uncovered secret properties held by bankrupt business people and tracked down fraudsters working from Cyprus.

Understanding Private Prosecutions

Davison's specialty lies in private prosecutions, a little-known field of law that allows victims to finance their own legal recourse. These cases are processed in the identical courts used by public prosecutors for England and Wales, and they can impose the equivalent custodial terms for suspects. "We essentially replicate the process between police and state attorneys," Davison explained. The primary difference is that police officers are representatives of the state, whereas individuals contact Davison when government authorities fail to provide assistance.

A Case of Financial Fraud

Carol's ex-boyfriend, Jiro Wilson, had convinced her to provide him money to fund a company he was establishing. In exchange, Wilson promised her shares in his fledgling firm. "In retrospect, I could recognize how naive I was to believe him," Carol later remembered in a legal testimony. "He would often call me suspicious, and definitely made me feel this way when I suspected he was seeing other women."

One evening, while secretly scrolling through Wilson's phone, she recorded the numbers of other women in his address book, and began messaging them in secret. To Carol's horror, three women informed her that Wilson had also "borrowed" thousands of pounds from them. Carol created a WhatsApp group, and arranged to meet the women at one of their homes in Exeter. The four women discovered that each had been deceived in the identical manner. "He was a disgusting narcissist," one of them commented. In total, Wilson had taken £46,000 from them, promising they would gain the benefits of putting money in his company. He spent the money on escorts, restaurant meals and motorbikes.

In Situations Where Law Enforcement Shows Minimal Interest

Carol reported Wilson's financial crime to the police, who referred her to the fraud reporting service, which provided her a case identifier and never contacted her again. The three other women also were unable to interest 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 obvious that this was a significant fraud committed by a extremely devious, manipulative individual," Asher remembered. "But the police weren't interested." Asher recommended 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 probably repay their costs. So the women cobbled together the money, and on Asher's recommendation, Carol approached Davison, the private investigator.

Building the Case

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

The Growing Phenomenon of Private 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 situation is not rare. The result is that over the past decade, a alternative criminal justice system has emerged in England and Wales, staffed by lawyers who focus in privately prosecuting crimes, and ex- police officers who investigate them. Government statistics on private prosecutions are scarce, 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 extremely uncommon," said a barrister who specialises 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 regard these prosecutions as a answer to reducing state budgets, and a way to obtain justice when all other routes have failed. But the risk is that affluent victims can afford something unavailable 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 examining complex cases puts such prosecutions beyond the 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 fill that gap, the best way to do it would be by adequately funding the criminal justice system."

Financial Crime Instances and Police Approach

In recent years, fraud has continued increasing. 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 regarded as uninteresting. "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."

Current Systems and Their Shortcomings

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 sufficient resources, they're informed," 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."

Financial Considerations of Non-Government Prosecutions

While victims cover the initial costs of private prosecutions, many of their expenses are eventually 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 government money, a source of public funds that covers the costs incurred in criminal prosecutions. The relevant 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 "typically 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.

Possible Misuse and Exploitation

Private prosecutions can also be useful 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 skilled at criminalising people for minor rule-breaking in recent years, fast-tracking strict 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 Developments 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 substantially impact 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 "adequate," 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.

Moral Questions and Societal Interest

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."

Conclusion

If the government reduces the fees that private prosecutors can claim back from the state, the industry that has thrived in the wake of austerity will surely diminish. 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.