• Criminals:  Under the so-called "justice" systems of a mixed economy, criminals are encouraged to view their misdeeds as mere breaches of an arbitrary social code, to be expiated by paying a supposed debt to "society" rather than to their victims. Under a restitution system, in contrast, they are confronted directly with the nature of their crimes and permitted to atone for them in a precise sense. They are thus provided an opportunity for moral rehabilitation, notably absent under current systems based on economic "rehabilitation" or "punishment." (As was noted in Section 3, the perpetrator of an immoral action has a vital ethical and psychological need to make amends to whomever may have been injured by that action; see p. 3.10:39.) A restitution system even creates a positive incentive for aggressors to turn themselves in, thereby minimizing their eventual costs of restitution, rather than going to great lengths to elude capture as at present. This point, which will become more clear after we have explored the idea of restitution in detail, may be difficult to appreciate simply because the idea of turning oneself in would be so laughable under the current system.

The widespread heightened sense of responsibility and of personal efficacy in a free society also tends to minimize the incidence of criminal aggression. Increased general prosperity and more widespread literacy and numeracy also lead to lower poverty levels, which may tend further to diminish crime rates. Decreased crime rates in turn minimize all of the various costs associated with the prevention and prosecution of crime, thereby increasing general levels of prosperity.     

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