Examining this Rise in Private Prosecutions: When Law Enforcement Shows Little Interest

During the summer months of 2018, private investigator Simon Davison obtained a contact from a woman reporting her former boyfriend had taken £10,000 from her. Carol, a transport coordinator at a municipal authority, constituted an unusual client for Davison. As the director of investigations at a crisis consultancy in London, Davison typically operates for wary companies and wealthy individuals. Previously a police detective, Davison has retrieved stolen cryptocurrency, uncovered secret properties owned by bankrupt business people and located fraudsters working from Cyprus.

Understanding Private Legal Actions

Davison's expertise lies in non-state legal actions, a little-known field of law that allows victims to finance their own legal recourse. These cases are heard in the identical courts operated by state legal authorities for England and Wales, and they can carry the same custodial terms for defendants. "We basically replicate the procedure between police and state attorneys," Davison explained. The key difference is that law enforcement are agents of the state, whereas individuals approach Davison when state agencies fail to provide help.

An Example of Financial Deception

Carol's ex-boyfriend, Jiro Wilson, had convinced her to provide him money to fund a company he was establishing. In return, Wilson committed to giving her shares in his fledgling firm. "In retrospect, I could recognize how gullible I was to trust him," Carol later recalled in a witness statement. "He would often describe me suspicious, and definitely made me feel this way when I suspected he was dating 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 horror, three women informed her that Wilson had also "taken" thousands of pounds from them. Carol established a WhatsApp group, and organized to meet the women at one of their homes in Exeter. The four women discovered that each had been duped in the same manner. "He was a repellent narcissist," one of them remarked. In total, Wilson had taken £46,000 from them, promising they would reap the benefits of putting money in his company. He used the money on escorts, restaurant meals and motorcycles.

In Situations Where Law Enforcement Shows Minimal Interest

Carol notified Wilson's financial crime to the police, who referred her to the national fraud hotline, which gave 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 obvious that this was a significant fraud perpetrated by a very sly, manipulative individual," Asher recalled. "But the police weren't interested." Asher recommended the women to bring a private prosecution. Doing so would be costly – possibly tens of thousands of pounds – but their case was so strong that Asher said the court would likely 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 dug into the case, Davison discovered that Wilson also appeared to have falsified his VAT returns. The judge who presided over the private prosecution in December 2020 determined Wilson's offences were possibly so serious that state authorities should take over the case. State legal authorities passed the case to the police, who discovered that Wilson had submitted nearly £250,000 in fraudulent VAT returns, and had stolen a further £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 sentenced him to six years in prison and described him as a "deceitful parasite."

Increasing Phenomenon of Private Prosecutions

Had the police taken Carol and the other women's original claims more seriously, a private prosecution would never have been necessary. But their experience is not uncommon. The result is that over the past decade, a parallel criminal justice system has developed in England and Wales, operated by lawyers who specialise in privately prosecuting crimes, and former police officers who examine them. Official data on private prosecutions are limited, but in 2024 they accounted for 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 focuses in white-collar crime. Since then, "it's been like the stock market going up. It's just a sharp line."

Availability and Cost Concerns

Some view these prosecutions as a answer to shrinking state budgets, and a method to obtain justice when all other options 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 examining 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 properly funding the criminal justice system."

Financial Crime Instances and Law Enforcement Approach

In recent years, fraud has only grown. In England and Wales, it rose 31% in 2024 alone. Yet the police have, as a rule, shown minimal 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 examine Microsoft Excel documents. As one officer put it in a 2019 report, "Fraud doesn't bang, bleed or shout."

Existing Systems and Their Current Shortcomings

The main port of call 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 highly capable. They've got adequate 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."

Monetary Considerations of Private Prosecutions

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 government money 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 "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.

Potential Misuse 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 pressuring someone, basically." Rail companies have been particularly adept at criminalising people for minor rule-breaking in recent years, fast-tracking draconian prosecutions through simplified 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.

Coming Changes and Considerations

Despite the growing demand for this alternative justice system, some people in the industry worry about its future sustainability. Government proposals currently making their way through parliament contain details that could substantially impact the entire business model. It proposes that lawyers should only be awarded "reasonably sufficient" 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 critical 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 Public Concern

If such prosecutions provoke a basic 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 deprive 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 failing 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.