General ► "Mob Justice" (Lets talk about it)

[Ðari]

Ground rules, just so we enter this conversation on equal terms.

• Keep the peace. Agree to disagree is the policy.
• Please don't use any flagrant language along the lines of slurs, racial-slurs, dehumanizing terminology, etc.
• To those of you who use anecdotal evidence (personal experience) solely, no one's here to invalidate your experience, but you are urged to use a combination of that with other cited sources to keep your takes and opinions reasonable.
• The goal is to have a productive and healthy conversation, move, type, think, and respond with this in mind. We're here to listen first, then discuss.

What is Mob Justice?

Mob justice can be explained as a situation where a crowd of people, sometimes several hundred, take the law into their own hands, act as accusers, jury and judge and punish an alleged criminal on the spot. This procedure often ends up with the victim being beaten to death or seriously injured.


Live Examples of Mob Justice: (For the sake of starting i'm only going to list two at present.)

The murder of Ahmaud Arbery; This was situation where Arbery was wrongly accused of burglary and was pursued by three men and fatally shot. Expressing the situation that there were no authorities involved at the time of this shooting and it was left solely in the hands of regular civilians.​

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Internet "Doxing": It should come as no surprise in the digital age that Internet Doxing of personal records, information, addresses, and names does happen. Audiences that belong to really popular internet personalities, are often impressionable to outrage. When information has often time been put out about an individual without a full scale understanding and breakdown definitively registering an individual as "guilty" a youthful or impressionable enough crowd with bypass what is fact and go on to harass an individual that is condemned by the larger influencer. Whether it is the intent of the influencer to send his following to attack an individual never side-steps the fact that information about a person they had/have discontent with is publicly shared with their audience.​

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Honorable Mention: Confirmation Bias

Discuss.

 

[2 quid is good]

It feels like it should be an easy topic to talk about it, the mob often gets it wrong and innocent people are hurt or killed.

Most of us have the privilege to live in countries where the rule of law generally works out, and enacting mob justice in any instances where it doesn't isnt really worth the drawbacks for most.

i feel like its a different story in developing countries. Disclaimer: Speaking from personal experience here, but i spend a lot of time in Pakistan, and spent even more time there as a child. There was a time period in the early 2010s where terrorism and child kidnappings were rife.

To the point that a relative was being picked up by his dad from school and was almost snatched by a passing motorbike from literally the open door of the car. Can you imagine the 5 seconds it takes for your dad to open and close a car door being the difference between life and death?

It really was a crazy time. And the general opinion of the public was the police were incompetent, if not complicit. So, whenever a kidnapper tried their luck in a place like that, they'd often get held down by a bunch of parents who'd stay there and not let the police get to the criminal, but instead wait for the province Rangers to come. (I guess an equivalent could be state troopers?). They'd stay for hours and literally block the police if they had to.

When you live in a place where you know there's no protection for you in practice, mob justice does start to not only become appealing, but almost necessary for people to live. Sexual predators, kidnappers, murderers, if the guy who's doing them has even 1 connection to someone who's even mildy somebody, attacking as a mob seems like the only way to get your justice. The unfortunate flip side is its normalised to the point that someone can get beaten or killed for so-called blasphemy charges by a whipped up mob, or even the wrong person.

I don't think there's ever any excuse for it if you live in a first world country, and while I think there's an excuse for it in third world countries, I don't really condone it. It normalises a behaviour and mentality that shouldn't be normalised and just leads to things getting worse or out of hand.

But it's easy to say that the focus should be on the rule of law becoming stronger. Cos there are so many instances of innocents behind bars or guilty people getting a slap on the wrist

 

[BufferAqua]

While I generally agree that mob justice can be abused to an extremely common degree, I think there is some understanding in first world countries. Particularly when it comes to lower-class citizens and minorities. Believe or not, the police can barely do anything when crimes happen consisting of those people. The general law may be biased towards those who are higher-class and white, too.

That’s my perspective on it at least.

 

[Ðari]

Thank you quid and Buffy for your replies.

For you Quid: I wanna touch on a few things that kind of align with what Aqua mentioned (pertaining to 1st-World) in that in many instances theres much more scrutiny held today over the actions a figure of authority makes. Our system of checks and balances regarding our police force over the past 30 years or so has shifted away from trusting that system. These interpretations have devolved into abuse of power, pushing for reforms and adjustments to sensitivity and de-escalation training at municipality(town to town) and state levels. Believe it or not, crime increases when officers can be sued and given due process for harassment, racial profiling, etc. A culture in which law-enforcement is taking a backseat to more intense ethical standards and engagement and in all likelihood their livelihood is on the line typically means their presence and engagement will diminish (to some degree). That previous sentence is just a working theory, take it with a grain of salt at the minimum.

That being said. As a general rule of thumb, I typically do not agree or endorse vigilantism. We have a system of law here put in place for a reason, but one shouldn't dismiss the idea that said system "never" works. As a general rule of thumb, (depending on where you live) you'll notice we have things built into certain suburban communities known as Neighborhood Watches and it's by no accident. Families that live within the same community as you and I with this in place is meant to protect you, your family, them, their family by reporting anything unusual within said community to the proper authorities as a means to mitigate the need to engage in taking the law into your own hands. Geographically, where you live matters, I am so serious. Your zipcode is everything. The town or city in which your reside that is more prone to crime vs not, matters. You will personally be engaged with said wrong doing happening vs never bearing witness to it depending on where you live.

//Anecdotal Evidence//​

I have a friend that lives off of Columbus & 103rd St in Manhattan, NY. The typical crime rate in this part of NY is staggering. The clientele that this friend is often dealing with is usually your disturbed miscreant (talking to themselves, erratic body movement, or both). Very often you will see the authorities either sitting across the street parked or at the end of the block squatting. The friend explains, "This is nothing new, they always do this" they proceed to explain how some teens bump into the disturbed man and he goes off on the group of teens. The disturbed man brandishes a knife and holds it up in front of the teens. The teens react ready to defend themselves and jump/dog pile on the man, a lot of shouting is happening as well and this is hard to miss. Lights flicker from the squad car across the street and both the teens and man react by stopping immediately, can you guess what happens next? The squad car flashes their lights, to signal oncoming traffic to stop, so they can join the flow of traffic, and completely dismisses the altercation happening across the street. Yet it was enough of a scare for the teens and the disturbed man to disengage from each other. The friend sighs, shakes their head, and goes back into their apartment building/high rise.​

The first time I heard that I thought, I'm usually only ever in that part of the city for maybe an hour or two so I would never notice something like that happening. There's no way a cop doesn't notice something like this happening within 15 feet of them and their was a whole shouting match happening. My thing is, these teens were ready to whoop this disturbed man's ass IN FRONT of the cop, whether he was on duty or not. I'm sure we can play that scenario out in a number of different ways, but their were no casualties and both disengaged from each other.