Vigilantes - good or bad?

Let’s me change up the usual religion threads for a change..

Let’s talk about Vigilantes..

All the rage in the 70’s..

Do you think we need more of them? It is clear criminals do not fear the cops as much as they should..

I think we need to train vigilantes and promote them as being ‘out there, ready to bust you when cops are not around’.

I think Vigilantes need to be given special treatment when caught. Like 7 days community service. How about cleaning the highways at 3….AM. ( hint hint )

Criminals need to fear something other than arrest. They need to fear death, and pray that the cops arrest them instead of these professional killers finding them and killing them in a slow and painful death.

You know how thugs usually back down when a police dog is set after them, or even just the bark? Why is that?

FEAR.

At that moment the perp fears the dogs bite more than anything else.

We need to have citizens who are angry at the crime and the lack of police effort to step up and take the war back to the criminals.

What is your take on this?

I’m not sure. We certainly don’t want a vigalante like Dexter, though. He’s a serial killer killing serial killer. Basically, he hunts down serial killers and kills them in twisted, horrible ways.

I’m not sure, Vanguarde. Fear is a useful tactic to bring down criminals, I suppose…fear of a vigalante could make them turn themselves into the police to avoid being punished more severely.

People taking the law into their own hands and being able to punish people they suspect of being criminals without any kind of due process? Sounds like a return to lynch mobs to me.

FEAR.

Punishment is a very tricky thing that is not effective unless delivered consistently and evenly. Unless you can catch an individual every single time they commit a criminal act, you won’t really make a change in their behavior. Punishment delivered unevenly is more likely to result in erratic behavior more than anything else. Personally I believe we need to make greater efforts to finding the root causes behind each criminal act and tackling those; for the individuals who cannot be made to change there is always a life sentence.

You mean 20 years, 10 on good behaviour?

That only occurs in indeterminate life sentences.

Originally posted by unproductive:

People taking the law into their own hands and being able to punish people they suspect of being criminals without any kind of due process? Sounds like a return to lynch mobs to me.

Pretty much the same mental image I’m getting, too.

Besides, can’t civilians already make citizen’s arrests? I can understand law enforcement professionals training people to use this power more effectively, but random people dealing out there own version of “justice” is a pretty scary thought.

What definition of “good” and “bad” are we using? I think this should be renamed to “Are Vigilantes effective in deterring crime?”

Originally posted by Vanguarde:

Let’s me change up the usual religion threads for a change..

Let’s talk about Vigilantes..

All the rage in the 70’s..

Do you think we need more of them? It is clear criminals do not fear the cops as much as they should..

I think we need to train vigilantes and promote them as being ‘out there, ready to bust you when cops are not around’.

I think Vigilantes need to be given special treatment when caught. Like 7 days community service. How about cleaning the highways at 3….AM. ( hint hint )

Criminals need to fear something other than arrest. They need to fear death, and pray that the cops arrest them instead of these professional killers finding them and killing them in a slow and painful death.

You know how thugs usually back down when a police dog is set after them, or even just the bark? Why is that?

FEAR.

At that moment the perp fears the dogs bite more than anything else.

We need to have citizens who are angry at the crime and the lack of police effort to step up and take the war back to the criminals.

What is your take on this?

That’s not vigilanteism, that’s hiring mercenaries to kill criminals whilst dressed in normal clothes. It’s also called “Under-cover Cops without restrictions”. There’s a reason we don’t engage in that kind of behavior.

Most normal, law-biding(as much as is possible) citizens aren’t going to be capable of committing murder. It’s not as easy as pulling the trigger. To kill is to take everything a person has accomplished, all of their hopes, dreams, loves, hates, everything that made them unique, and it completely erases all of that. What normal person is going to be capable of that?

I’m not sure. We certainly don’t want a vigalante like Dexter, though. He’s a serial killer killing serial killer. Basically, he hunts down serial killers and kills them in twisted, horrible ways.

I disagree, I think Dexter had a much more positive effect than a negative one. He killed people who beat the justice system, and usually they were responsible for some pretty twisted crimes. I’ve always been a fan of “Eye for an eye”, and Dexter fulfilled that mantra pretty well. Not only that, but Dexter didn’t kill Joe-schmoe for robbing a gas station, he didn’t kill the drug users, the petty criminals who might be committing the crimes out of desperation or out of ignorance/impaired thinking, he was killing the brutal, murderous victims. Not only that,(lol repetition) he only killed when he had adequate evidence to prove what these people were doing, and he could have no doubt. A Dexter-esque vigilante would probably be the best vigilante we could hope for.

What definition of “good” and “bad” are we using? I think this should be renamed to “Are Vigilantes effective in deterring crime?”

Of course not, just as the court system is effective at deterring crime, neither would a mobile single person judge-jury-executioner be effective. We’d get “Justice”, as the criminals would be immediately held accountable for their crimes, but we wouldn’t “deter” crimes. That’s not the goal of a vigilante. If I were to go out and become a vigilante, I certainly wouldn’t leave the house thinking “Yeah, I’m gonna deter some crime today!” The goal is to achieve Justice by holding the criminals accountable, not to stop them from committing crimes altogether.

You made a whole bunch of assumptions about me. I did not state my opinion in this matter, I merely suggested that the thread be renamed.

Originally posted by darkfrogger:

You made a whole bunch of assumptions about me. I did not state my opinion in this matter, I merely suggested that the thread be renamed.

Kasha was answering the question that you wanted the thread to be about, not answering you. You hadn’t stated your opinion yet.

Ok then, sorry about the misunderstanding.

i think vigilantes are good because although they beat people up they do it with good intentions

So, you wouldn’t mind if I punched you because I thought it would knock some sense into you?

it would be good but then a person (i.e. gang member) could become part of the vigilantes and just kill people freely

Originally posted by penguinwasher:

it would be good but then a person (i.e. gang member) could become part of the vigilantes and just kill people freely

That argument just doesn’t work. Any gang member (or person like one) who can fulfill the requirements needed for a certain job can get that job. Using your logic, a gang member could become a soldier or a police officer or an ambulance driver and misuse the privileges that come up with the job. When they give you a job with such privileges, they do so with a certain degree of trust based on what information they managed to gather. If you think that the government would even accept this stupid idea and then hire a gang member, then you really have a problem.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/a/gangs.htm >_<

Wow, then the government has a problem. Anyway, I didn’t specify what government I was talking about so that doesn’t necessarily apply to my argument. “Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

You make it sound like the government intentionally hires gang members. This is not the case. Thus your whole premise is kaput.

Did you read my previous post?

If by previous post you mean the last sentence of your third to last post….dammit never mind. I thought you were attributing it directly, not pointing it out as absurd.

If we ‘trained’ vigilantes, wouldn’t they be cops then? And training them, to essentially hunt down and kill criminals, then they’re like soldiers (in a sense). I see what you’re saying, but there is no need to train vigilantes, all we need to do is protect citizens that act like them.

I haven’t really given this much thought, so I’ll post again when I have.

Much more needs to be done to counteract societies ills.

With regards to law, and criminals we seem to just look at crime and punishment.

But largely ignore cause and rehabilitation, rising inequality, unemployment and large abandonment of the poor will only add to these problems.

Your ideas echo cruel and unusual punishment, Vanguarde. To this day, people are still saying that being grabbed by a German Shepherd and dragged to the ground is cruel. So is the murder the perp just committed, but I guess that doesn’t count. I like the idea of vigilantes, but the state, or country for that matter, would be hard-pressed to keep them in check. Because they don’t work for us… who is to say they won’t go out and do whatever the hell they feel like doing? If we were to turn a blind eye to people who are doing wrong actions for the right reasons, the lines between justice, revenge, right, and wrong would be brutally blurred.

Men need to be led, not subued to submission or in this case, termination.