Vigilantism

I know what Rosey in the debate corner lolwhat.

Anyways, I do debate for school, and Im actually participating in Value-Debate, otherwise known as LD. I actually found this topic very intriguing, because its so present in the modern day world.

Resolved: Vigilantism is justified when the government has failed to enforce the law.

You can make so many cases for either side its kind of ridiculous. Im running Justice as my core value for each, and then using Lockes social contract for pro and Rawls theory of justice and veil of ignorance for neg. I personally believe that the pro is the way to go, in Lockes social contract, if you are fighting for justice in a society, you give up your rights to the government as long as they promise to keep you safe and protected. It could be argued that because the government has failed to enforce the law that the contract is therefore broken. Therefore making Vigilantism perfectly acceptable.

Opinions please dearies.

Oh and Vigilantism according to Blacks Law Dictionary Abridged Seventh Edition is "The act of a citizen who takes the law into his or her own hands by apprehending and punishing suspected criminals"

 

if they don't go so far as it would be abuse of power, it's okay with me

 

I can't put this into an official format, but I can debate this.

Vigilantes are great at taking out the bad guy, but unless they kill him, they will always have serious issues with actually locking them away. unless he ends up dead, the criminal will always get out of court because the evidence against them is never gathered in a manner acceptable to law enforcement. Entrapment, illegal search and seizure, kidnapping - these seem to be the mainstay of vigilante justice. It's only justified, IMO, when A) there is NO legal system whatsoever (anarchy), or B) if the legal system is COMPLETELY corrupt - every single judge, lawyer, and juror is bought by the criminals.

 

Vigilantism almost always starts out with the best of intentions, but then those with the power to take the law into their own hands start to make up their own laws. At least the law is generally unbiased and impartial. A vigilante is a human being, subject to every emotion and whim just like the rest of us. What makes them so special that they get to decide what is right and what is wrong?

Prime example, a man in Londonderry who was awaiting trial for abusing/raping a 14 year old girl was shot in the knees in his home by two "vigilantes". It was a paramilitary styled attack. Who is to say they were right? The man may have been innocent. And even so, if you can let him go without a fair trial then you have no right to one either.

These systems are to build mutual systems of interaction (lawl, I just pulled that sentence out of my ass ;D). If you think it is okay for a vigilante to punish someone without a fair trial then it is perfectly okay for you to be punished for any crime without trial.

 

As long as they dont go as far as to kill anyone for an unnaparent reason. But as we have seen in so many cases, vigilantism is frowned upon. Why? I think jealousy. Greed. Wich has destroyed this whole country, and World.

 

If you want to put a criminal away, you should do it in a way that's within legal barriers. If the justice system fails you (the criminal doesn't get the death sentence you wanted, or is set free after a fair trial), don't go chasing after the criminals with guns. Even if it means letting the bad guys get away. It violates their, and everybody else's rights and makes a mockery of the justice system.

 

this in my own opinion is contraversial.
What others consider as justice,others would be considered crime and vica versa.One persons idea of justice being enforced on everyone else isn't right.
Sure if a person like the batman existed then maybe it would work but that won't happen any time soon.

 

i dont think vigilatism is a good idea. the idea of forced order is a little over baring for some people to harbor. yes we all want a better world but theres alwayz another way to brighten up or horizons.

 

yes, but what if the system is completely corrupt, ala Batman Begins, where the criminals run everything? Or what if it doesn't exist at all, as in a state of anarchy? Then, IMO, is the only justifiable time for vigilantism, and it should stop as soon as the justice system works again.

 

Yeah I agree with that, I forgot to mention it in my other post. When the bad guys are the law, of course people are gonna make a stand, or else nothing would ever change.

Also, the justice system isn't perfect, but it's all we have to get the job done.

 

In today's world, where for the most part justice isn't corrupt to the point where bad guys control the courts, vigilantism is wrong. Humans are too ruled by their emotions to trust justice with. And it's too easy for someone to be swayed by their emotions so that their form of justice may become skewed.

But, if the world does become a giant crime scene, then a vigilante would be needed. Someone who wouldn't be afraid to cross societies laws to create a better society. The problem comes then with that the vigilante would also have to be ready to back down once the court system was clean again and justice wouldn't be skewed. People would be scared of someone taking justice into their own hands, no matter how many times they proved to be fair.

 

lol. Society. Justice. They should never go together.

A law, to begin with, is proof of a failure in the social realm. When you stick up a law and a sign that says "25 mph" that's proof there is no REAL solution. In our society (at least America, Japan and other highly industrialized nations) things are highly technological, and we have the technology to make cars electrically monitored as to not go over the speed limits. Say if you go over 35 in a 25, the car will slow down no matter how hard you push on the gas. That is a solution. However, if the government has to become vigilant when laws aren't followed that is proof they have no other way to solve it. If people aren't following it, it isn't their fault, it's the system's fault for not being adequately capable. We have the ability to do things more efficiently but in order to do so the system (which never budges) would have to alter.

Now, while vigilantism is an adequate solution, it fails to address the real problem. Instead it attacks the symptom (criminals, which in any context don't exist <_<) and creates more issues when it's plastered onto the front page of your newspaper, because you give everyone a separated psyche where they see people as "criminals" first, instead of "humans." A criminal is a aberrant individual in a culture, and since the person has to do what they can to survive, that hardly counts as a criminal act for whatever they do. In the same sense, a banker will engage in the elitist mind set he was raised with and perform illegal activity on that level, which feeds the illusion that his status symbol is important.

 

As a person that has occasionally had to be kind of a 'vigilante' now and then, because the law wasn't helping people who needed it, I can say that -some- vigilantism is necessary. This does not mean that I think people should run around taking the law into their own hands if the law will actually work.

Some examples:
A handicapped girl was getting rough-housed on in school and being poked and prodded with her quad-canes that she needs to walk with by 3 guys. I went over and took them from the 2 boys who had them and hit them with them and gave them back to the girl so she could get on her way. No one else was doing a thing about it, so I did.

A girl was stuck on the school roof, and yeah, she shouldn't have been there but climbed up to get her ball. Some people were making fun of her and she was crying so I made them get lost. I then climbed up and helped her down and some jackass called the cops on me for it but the cops let me go saying it was fine.

A boy twice this girl's age who was in my classes decided to beat on the girl and so I got him off her and we had a scrap. No one else did anything and just stood around watching not sure what to do or cheering it on. No one ratted on me for it either and some people even thanked me.

A group of girls were picking on another girl for having scars and such and I went over and helped her out and let her hang out with me a while and hooked her up with better 'friends' after I had told the girls to back off of her and that no one liked them anyway. Good fun as the girls became then rather unpopular as none of the guys liked them anymore for being snooty brats.

A woman in the projects had 5 kids and the ex-husband was terrorizing her to get her to take him back and such. He went so far, one night while me and a couple friends were hanging out with her, to start batting in her window and hit her car too. I went out and took the bat from him and told him if he's around again, I'd beat his face in. She already had an order of protection and had called the cops numerous times but they did nothing to the guy. After that and a couple more incidences where she called me and my friends, he stopped and we talked things out and he ended up deciding to leave her alone and move on and even said he had some odd respect for me though I was an *******. xD

In the end, sometimes the law cannot act or will not to do the right things because either the authority figures are not told or because they discriminate against class, gender, race or religion. The law is not perfect. I feel that as a human being, if I just walk by something that is very wrong, I am not being a decent person. I will of course call the authorities such as a teacher or the cops if I feel I am able to and that something can be done, but there are times I feel a citizen acting in the defense of others is proper and the right thing to do. Some of the examples above aren't what some people might call 'vigilantism' and I could have used other examples as well, but the point I am trying to make here is that there is a fine line between a person 'taking the law into their own hands' as a vigilante versus someone doing an act because it is the humane thing to do. If a person is being a vigilante to deal out 'revenge' for those wronged, then the person is not doing 'justice' in my mind. I.e. the guy who has to defend a girl's honor because someone is making fun of her and gets into a huge fight over it.. that's more out of revenge than just getting the others to back off the girl and helping -her- instead. There's a difference between being cocky, brazen and doing something to be 'tough' versus having the well being of the victim on the mind.

Hope that makes sense.

 

When the government fails, vigilantism is completely justified. Governmental bodies and nations therein are no more perfect than individual people are, no matter how untrue we would like that to be. It is only natural, then, that they would and do fail in some aspects, sometimes these aspects should be taken care of.

But then again, this does only apply to an extent. It really boils down to what is being justified with the vigilantism.

 

Vigilantism can be justified to an extent in the case of an absence of government enforcement of the law; as per how far the group of people, persons, or person would go to enforce the law, he or she must make sure that as a normal citizen themselves not assumed as a true law enforcer under government standards, they should make sure that they should not break the laws they are trying to enforce themselves through attempting to apprehend criminals.

It could also be abused to a certain extent, such as striking deals with the current law enforcers who have failed to enforce the law, and depending on the intentions of the vigilant then this may not be justified.

 

The whole vigilante thing is a bit ridiculous. The idea of taking the law into your own hands will only get you hurt or in trouble yourself. Law enforcement is there for a reason. If we undermine it, then we are no different for these criminals that we desire to put away.

 

My argument gets right around that, the idea that there are some things that law enforcement should cover but doesn't.

 

I humbly beg to differ my dear Dalk, but the moment you touch anyone in a forceful manner it becomes assault. If you use brute force, it becomes battery. In the eyes of some it may be considered justified, but in the eyes of the law it would be criminal. And if I were the criminal, I would press charges out sheer spite.

 

The problem can be in what the law does do as much as it can be in what it does not do. There are plenty of useless, arbitrary, and quite silly laws out there that only spend time and money on investigations and legal systems on people who really didn't do anything, when there are perfectly good criminals out there like the ones you mentioned. The law also likes to over inflate things sometimes, a friendly nudge could become assault. Of course that example is a complete hyperbole, but you get what I mean.

 

I see your point. All I'm saying is that it's best to leave the law to those who are authorized no matter how imperfect our justice is.