Without Tax-Funded Police, Who Keeps the Peace?
Let’s imagine a society called New America, with a competitive market for community policing and criminal justice.
Imagine a society where a government no longer monopolizes law enforcement. In this social arrangement, the responsibility for community safety shifts. Because nature abhors vacuums—and criminals love ‘em—private firms, clubs, and mutual aid societies will step in.
Such is life in New America, where a decentralized network of private protection firms has replaced traditional monopoly police forces in some territory. At first, this might seem chaotic or unworkable:
How on earth could a society function without a centralized authority to enforce the law?
New Americans have built a system that works, driven by market competition, accountability, and self-sovereign choices. Let’s see if we can overcome failures of imagination that too often limit our understanding of what’s possible with reform.
A Contract for Community Safety
In New America, people don’t rely on a monopoly authority to protect them. Instead, they sign and renew contracts with private protection firms, tailoring their security to their budgets and needs.
These contracts are straightforward. The firm commits to safeguarding its clients, while the clients agree to pay fees and abide by the firm’s rules. They can go shopping if they don’t like the rules or fee schedule. Otherwise, it’s an agreement that blends autonomy with responsibility.
Protection is a service offering. But that’s not all.
Hybridizing the service with insurance makes things more interesting. If a client becomes a victim, their firm helps compensate them and then seeks to recover those costs from the perpetrator. Firms aren’t limitless deep pockets, though. Their liability is capped at what they can realistically reclaim from offenders. This keeps the system practical and incentivizes firms to pursue justice efficiently. But given that compensatory justice is baked in, it’s better than requiring offenders to *pay their debt to society* when they should be paying their debts to victims.
Bespoke Protection: Three Levels
One of New America’s most striking features is its criminal procedure, which offers four distinct levels of protection—labeled A through C—each with its own cost and safeguards.
A, the priciest option, mirrors the rigorous standards many associate with traditional courts: trials with full juries, strict evidentiary rules for every charge, and multiple appeals.
B, the most popular choice, streamlines the process slightly by replacing full juries with smaller ones for most cases, limiting the number of appeals, and broadening the forms of admissible evidence.
C is basic coverage, which offers affordability and access at the expense of procedural rigor. For example, one might agree to go before a single judge for petty crimes and be required to join a community peace-pledge system (more on this later).
The bigger the criminal history someone has, the steeper the price they pay for coverage—reflecting the heightened risk they pose. So, if one has too many priors, she might only get C’s benefits at B’s pricetag. Of course, non-profits might dedicate themselves to helping the poor get better representation and more benefits.
Perhaps you have noticed a shift away from punitive justice toward more compensatory justice. The incentives are for firms to help make victims whole. It’s rather like the perpetrators are being swarmed by debt collectors. Incarceration becomes more of a last resort. The key concern is ensuring that the incentives don’t prompt police falsely to create criminals but instead align around the provision of justice for all parties.
Anticipating Criticisms
It’s a three-tiered system of justice! If there is not equal access, then it is not universal justice!
We must always consider tradeoffs in all questions about how society is to be arranged. With any system of justice—whether determined by monopoly authorities or through some contractarian means—we have to do our best to approximate what universal fundamental justice might look like and then build upon that foundation. Option C, for example, might be that sort of approximation. A universal right to a full jury trial is not necessarily written in the Tablets of Truth and Justice. When the stakes are lower, it’s a nice-to-have.
That said, New America has pioneered one-way constant-horizon contracts to prevent firms from automatically dropping troublesome clients. These contracts require firms to provide four years’ notice before canceling a contract, ensuring stability and giving clients time to adjust or reform. This safeguard balances flexibility with commitment, proving that a market-driven system can prioritize fairness and redemption.
According to the late scholar Walter Grinder, “Suretyship is a specialized line of insurance created whenever one party guarantees the performance of an obligation by another party.” Grinder explains that in medieval England and Iceland, the Anglo-Saxon frith-borh (and later frankpledge) systems provide early examples of social reciprocity in community protection.
Small groups could come together and require all the participants to take responsibility for guaranteeing that justice would be meted out for anyone in the group behaving badly. Because the entire community—called a tithing—could be held liable, there was intense pressure for members to avoid collusion or obstruction. Frith-borh translates as *peace-pledge,* which we can include.
More egalitarian types might argue that one should not be allowed to buy extra justice services. But we follow Sowell in asking, “Compared to what?” In our current system, people buy extra justice all the time. Poor people, for example, are routinely represented by bad lawyers or pushed into plea deals because they can’t afford to access the full benefits of state-provided justice. Like many other socialized things, justice ends up being rationed. At least in New America, there would be a constant churn of competition and innovation, resulting in lower costs and more justice, fairness, and better outcomes.
We can also imagine incentives reorienting. What if the protection agencies paid their police bonuses for less crime? With a more compensatory model—and in scenarios with more crime—the clients might have to pay less, meaning the police would have to extract proportionally more agency revenues from the perpetrators.
Cooperation Without Centralization
With no government monopoly police, how do firms handle conflicts between clients of different companies?
The answer lies in cooperation, not compulsion.
The Association of New America Protection Firms (ANAPF) represents 92 percent of the population and sets industry-wide standards to ensure consistency. Firms negotiate agreements or agree to arbitration within ANAPF to resolve disputes or harmonize standards, creating a web of mutual accountability.
Rules can differ, though.
Some firms might treat blackmail as a crime, while others might treat it as a tort. Such variability reflects New America’s practical pluralism. Consider a scenario in which you commit blackmail. If you harm someone who contracted with a different firm, your firm will notify you and require you to attend a hearing. If there is a clash of rulesets between firms, the firms might negotiate beforehand to determine the set to be employed. In this scenario, if you’re found guilty, you’ll owe restitution plus penalties—or face incarceration. That means it’s decided blackmail is a crime under this scenario.
Once you’re released, finding new coverage might be challenging as firms review your record. This isn’t merely punishment. It’s a system designed to deter future crime and encourage responsibility.
Beyond Contracts: Security and Options
Protection firms don’t stop at dispute resolution. They provide patrols, guards, and neighborhood security, often with local communities mandating that residents contract with a specific firm for cohesion.
But what about those who can’t afford protection?
Charitable firms step up, though their capacity is limited. Without coverage, individuals are vulnerable—potentially facing imprisonment without an advocate. Family members, churches, and mutual aid associations can help fund protection for loved ones, creating a safety net rooted in personal ties rather than impersonal bureaucracy. Further, the falsely accused and imprisoned can haul their accusers into court or win settlements, which means lawyers are incentivized to assist the innocent.
Cost-conscious New Americans have ways to lower their premiums. Agreeing to monitoring—like tracking—can signal low risk to firms. A clean record helps, too. While demographic factors might influence rates, behavior outweighs all else, rewarding those who stay out of trouble.
In New America, each member of an agency’s police force is required to carry insurance. If an officer is discovered using excessive force, his premium goes up. Too many instances and his insurance becomes unaffordable. So, he must give up policing even if the agency doesn’t fire him.
Why It Would Work
Skeptics might wonder: What keeps this system from collapsing into chaos or monopoly? The answer lies in its design. Competition between firms prevents any player from dominating. Reputation is everything, and customers can switch if they’re unhappy. Diseconomies of scale ensure firms don’t grow too powerful because bigger isn’t always better in this market. The result is a dynamic equilibrium in which firms must stay responsive and effective to survive. The actuarial (insurance) aspect helps maintain good incentives and self-regulation. Consumers of protection services would also have strong incentives to mitigate their risks in exchange for lower premiums.
Imagining What’s Possible
New Americans argue their system outshines traditional government policing. Where bureaucracies can stagnate or abuse power, this decentralized approach adapts and self-corrects. It’s not perfect—those without protection face real risks—but its existence would prove that community safety doesn’t need a state monopoly.
New America’s protection system challenges us to rethink what community safety and justice could look like. It’s easy to dismiss it as fanciful or dystopian, but its imaginary citizens see it as liberation—a way to reclaim control over their lives. By blending market forces with personal responsibility, New America has built something resilient, flexible, and uniquely theirs. The next time you reflect on the provision of law and order, consider New America—not as a utopia, but as a bold experiment waiting to be tried.
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I am not that optimistic; at ALL !!!
Criminal brains are quick to jump into the safety-vacuum; it's THEM who will quickly "organize to protect" the vulnerable against fees. The ones who cannot pay the monthly charge will be beaten-up and robbed on a daily basis by them until a kind of "regular subscription" is coerced ... Even with federal/state-police, crimes/fraud of this type have been uncovered many times.
Only a heavily armed and fully trained population where 5-year olds and grannies know how to use the "tools" without hesitation criminals will be effectively deterred. Their gangs would be confronted by the entire neighborhood.
Crime is an inherent part of any mass-society due to anonymity and hidden corruption.
Only in a decentralized society (not larger than the Dunbar's-#), a softer approach would bear positive results/protection.