Criminal Punishment

The below is quoted from Murray N. Rothbard and expresses the prosecution of crime in a true libertarian society. It is a notion that is never recognized or acknowledged by many individuals and institutions. Take a moment and consider it.

"The central thrust of libertarian thought, then, is to oppose any and all aggression against the property rights of individuals in their own persons and in the material objects they have voluntarily acquired. While individual and gangs of criminals are of course opposed, there is nothing unique here to the libertarian creed, since almost all persons and schools of thought oppose the exercise of random violence against persons and property.
There is, however, a difference of emphasis on the part of libertarians even in this universally accepted area of defending people against crime. In the libertarian society there would be no "district attorney" who prosecutes criminals in the name of a nonexistent "society," even against the wishes of the victim of crime. The victim would himself decide whether to press charges. Furthermore, as another side to the same coin, in a libertarian world the victim would be able to press suit against a wrongdoer without having to convince the same district attorney that he should proceed. Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker?would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime."

http://mises.org/rothbard/newliberty.asp