Western stories and motion pictures are full of images of badmen swaggering about the Old West, brought to justice only by valiant lawmen shooting them down in daring gunfights. In reality, this type of writing consists mostly of invented and anecdotal tales. After a shootout, real lawmen doing their legitimate job in the Old West did not simply walk away from a gunfight, as commonly depicted in the movies. They had to face the legal system and justify a shooting, the same as the criminals they arrested. To provide a more realistic account of criminal justice, this book is a factual history of crime and punishment in the Old West from about 1850 to 1900. The focus is how criminals in the Old West came into conflict with the law and what happened after they were apprehended. This book describes the entire criminal justice process, starting with common crimes committed in the Old West, from crimes such as train robbery and cattle theft, to criminal assault, and gunfights.

The narrative discusses methods of apprehension of criminals and the final resolution of their crimes through the criminal justice system, followed by the consequences for the lawbreaker, which included local jail, state prisons, flogging, or (if the crime were severe enough) hanging. Topics are illustrated using stories of actual criminals, lawmen, and crimes as examples.