Page 12 of 42 103 Minn. L. Rev. 844, *864 Public prosecutors now dominate enforcement decisions in both common law-based and civil law-based justice systems worldwide. That is hardly surprising, given the far-reaching regulatory scope of modern criminal law and high expectations that the state will ensure security against social disorder and innumerable harms, and will intervene in risk creation long before manifest criminal conduct or injury. © That agenda requires capacity, resources, and expertise that only public agencies can marshal. Moreover, a criminal enforcement regime that relied heavily on private plaintiffs would be one skewed against redress for poor victims who cannot bear litigation costs to vindicate their own interests. 7° Without safeguards, such a regime [*865] also could be at the mercy of the varied, perhaps idiosyncratic motives and interests of private actors lodging criminal complaints. Still, many countries continue to authorize private citizens to initiate criminal prosecutions when public officials do not, and others allow privately funded attorneys to assist or supplement public prosecutors in litigating criminal cases. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and England and Wales all continue to allow private prosecutions, 7! and fifteen of the twenty-eight member states of the European Union grant victims some comparable [*866] authority. ’* Details vary across jurisdictions, but everywhere private prosecutors’ authority is limited by oversight from public [*867] prosecutors and courts. 7 The standard common law model is that public prosecutors retain the power to take over privately filed charges and then either try the case themselves, negotiate a plea bargain, or - more commonly when intervention occurs - dismiss the charges altogether. In this framework, private actors can press charges when public officials do not, but functionally they serve primarily as a mechanism for political accountability. Through private charging in the wake of pub