We gain our notions of right and wrong, learn about the law and criminal justice, and manage many of our disputes through informal groups and institutions. They include the family, community, religious organizations and schools, voluntary associations, the media and extensive national and international intergroup networks. These forms of organization are sources of social control and law. They are also vehicles through which law and notions about crime and criminal justice practices enter into our everyday lives. Sometimes these unofficial sources of social control support criminal justice and legal systems. On the other hand, sometimes they conflict with the goals, norms, and official laws of the nation. This course examines the family, community, identity group, and corporation as alternatives to state-anchored law and social control and as our first-line resources in the management of disputes and conflicts. We study them as sources of both crime and the living law, and as they come into conflict with and support law and its enforcement. We will ask what happens in the fields of criminal justice as these unofficial systems change and break down; what new forms of unofficial social control are developing in the United States; and how we use our disputes and conflicts to build society and to communicate, educate, and entertain. The course also explores dispute settlement organizations and processes that are developing now as alternatives to the official legal and criminal justice systems.