The distribution of justice was a practice commonly adopted by

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

s. Ships operated as limited

democracies Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...

(for more details, see

pirate code A pirate code, pirate articles, or articles of agreement were a code of conduct for governing pirates. A group of sailors, on turning pirate, would draw up their own code or articles, which provided rules for discipline, division of stolen goods, ...

) and imposed their ideas of justice upon the crew of the ship that they captured. After capture, the crew would be questioned as to whether they had suffered cruel or unjust treatment from the commander of the ship. Any commanders "against whom Complaint was made" would be punished or even executed. This punishment was not indiscriminately given to all ships' commanders. An "honest Fellow that never abused any Sailors" would be rewarded, and sometimes freed. This distribution of justice was seen as of profound importance by pirates.

Bartholomew Roberts ) , type=Pirate , birth_place = Casnewydd Bach, near Puncheston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, Kingdom of England , death_place = At sea off of Cape Lopez, Gabon , allegiance= , serviceyears=1719–1722 , base of operations= Off the coast of the Americas ...

' crew even designated a member of his crew, George Wilson, as their "Dispenser of Justice". Linebaugh and Rediker describe the early eighteenth-century pirate ship as "democratic in an undemocratic age" as well as "egalitarian in a hierarchical age, as pirates divided their plunder equally, leveling all the elaborate structure of pay ranks common to all other maritime employments." Pirates during this time period "distributed justice, elected officers, divided loot equally, and establish a different discipline. They limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of the practices of the capitalists merchant shipping industry, and maintained a multicultural, multiracial, multinational social order."

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