Vigilante justice is when individuals take the law into their own hands to punish criminals, often breaking the law themselves. It is different from organizations fighting organized crime. Vigilante justice has sinister roots and lacks the organization and protections of the legal system. It often involves breaking the law and personal connections to the crime, making it difficult to separate emotions from safety concerns.
When someone goes outside the law to inflict punishment for a crime, this is called vigilante justice. People involved in this type of justice are not qualified members of the judicial community and may break the law in pursuing “justice”. People engage in this activity for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from perceived inactivity by law enforcement agencies to personal experiences, and many nations have very strict laws on vigilantism.
It is important to distinguish between vigilante justice and organizations fighting organized civil crime. A Neighborhood Watch Association, for example, is not engaged in policing, because members are simply keeping tabs on crime and reporting it to the proper authorities. Conversely, an angry mob that harasses someone suspected of child molestation is engaged in vigilance, because it makes assumptions about the perpetrator of a crime and gets out of the legal system.
While some people defend vigilante justice, arguing that vigilantes step forward when the legal system is unable or unwilling to do its duty, this practice is highly questionable and has very sinister roots. It’s been carried on for centuries, but it gained a lot of momentum in the United States in the 1800s with “Vigilance Committees,” which ostensibly fought crime, but actually persecuted immigrants and blacks. These committees blamed any form of crime on their minority of choice, conducting public lynchings and other forms of punishment in an effort to scare members of that minority out of town. In the American West, vigilante justice was also used as a tool to eliminate rivals, and anyone with substantial land or mineral holdings ran the risk of being executed by a vigilante mob at the direction of a greedy enemy.
The key problem with vigilante justice is that it lacks the organization of the bona fide legal system. While the wheels of justice can sometimes turn slowly, the legal system has put in place a variety of measures designed to accurately identify criminals. Providing criminal suspects with a fair trial and adequate punishment is considered an important part of life in a civilized society, not least because it ensures that the right person is taken off the street.
In addition to lacking the protections of the legal system, vigilante justice often involves breaking the law. Humiliating, harassing and killing people suspected of crimes is illegal, even if the suspect turns out to be the culprit. Members of a vigilant vengeful mob may also have personal connections to the crime, removing the element of neutrality from the case and making it difficult to separate personal emotions from true safety concerns.
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