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101 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/nylr101 and id is 1 raw text is: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW VOLUME 101 APRIL 2026 NUMBER 1 ARTICLES PRIVATE PROSECUTION AND THE STATE ANNA ARONS* The modern family regulation system is paradigmatically public. In the common account, the state plays a monopolistic role. It decides which families to investigate and which to prosecute, which families to surveil and which to separate, and which services and benefits to provision for families entangled in the system. Yet, this public family regulation paradigm obscures the role of private prosecution. Nearly half of states permit private individuals to initiate dependency prosecutions. In these cases, private prosecutors allege that parents have neglected or abused their children and seek state intervention on the fundamental right to family integrity. This Article surfaces the understudied and undertheorized private prosecutions of the family regulation system and situates them within the carceral state. Drawing on sources including statutes, legislative history, case law, accounts developed by other scholars, information obtained through records requests, and interviews with practitioners and state officials, it sketches out the legal framework for these prosecutions and traces recurring patterns of use. This study reveals private prosecutions to be a tool of last resort: Private individuals opt to prosecute their loved ones or even themselves after the state has failed to meet their needs through other means. * Copyright © 2026 by Anna Arons, Assistant Professor of Law, St. John's University School of Law; and Impact Project Director, Family Defense Clinic, NYU School of Law. For helpful comments and conversations, thank you to Nila Bala, Haiyun Damon-Feng, Cynthia Godsoe, Josh Gupta-Kagan, Sarah Katz, Emma Kaufman, Sarah Lorr, Justin Murray, Nathan Rouse, Clare Ryan, Sarah Swan, Lisa Washington, and participants in the Care and Carcerality Conference, the Clinical Writers' Workshop, CrimFest!, the Decarceration Law Professors Workshop, the Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference, the New York Area Family Law Scholars Workshop, the Richmond Junior Faculty Forum, and the Rutgers Law School Faculty Workshop. For her outstanding and dogged research assistance, thank you to Kayla Dorancy, and for their careful and thoughtful attention throughout the editing process, thank you to Liam Kim and the rest of the New York University Law Review staff. 1 Imaged with Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review