As the police and courts continue to struggle with the legacy of austerity, many people are seeking alternative routes to justice – but it could be making matters worse In the summer of 2018, the private investigator Simon Davison got a call from a woman who said her ex-boyfriend had stolen £10,000 from her. Carol (not her real name), a traffic manager at a local council, was not a typical client for Davison. As the director of investigations at AnotherDay, a crisis consultancy in London,