With the exception of a few pockets such as classical Athens and ancient Rome, theories about criminal justice outside the modern West rely mainly on inference from the societies’ laws. Prehistoric societies require a double inference, since archaeology cannot say much about criminal justice practices, let alone theories. For those societies, contemporary kinship-based societies have to serve as an inferential model. The classic study remains Arthur S. Diamond’s 1971 Primitive Law Past and Present. It covers ancient civilizations such as Egypt, the classical period, medieval Europe, and contemporary tribal or kinship-based societies. Diamond categorized societies’ laws according to their types of political economy, so his analysis has a strong social evolutionary bias. Nonetheless, it is a serviceable approach as it permits both generalizations about the functions of criminal justice and inferences about their rationales—that is, the theories.