Robert BuddanWhen citizens 'take the law into their own hands' against criminals, their actions are often referred to as 'mob killings or 'vigilante justice'.
The human rights group, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), has referred to the citizens' beatings of five robbers (and the death of one) in Gordon Town as a failure of justice. On an earlier occasion, it referred to another killing as murder. To others, these are acts by angry and frustrated citizens countering criminality in their communities.
The media reported that in 2003, there were 20 'mob killings' and 21 in 2004. There have been 15 this year.
In the Gordon Town case, cars were being stolen and one man lost two cars in a week. In Whitehouse, Westmoreland, citizens killed four men trying to rob a supermarket.
In Trelawny, two men were killed trying to raid a farm because of rampant praedial larceny in the area.
Anger and frustration are understandable when a two-year-old girl is shot and killed and community members begin to fear for the lives of their children.
On the one hand, organisations like JFJ say citizens should not bypass due process of law, which every citizen is entitled to, but at the same time they complain of the failures of the justice system.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Mark Shields spoke to one kind of failure. A suspect was arrested for a triple murder in St. Catherine. He was released on bail.
He was then arrested on a murder in Spanish Town. But he has been released on bail again. This is what angers and frustrates citizens. These very citizens are then accused of 'mob justice' when they take the law into their own hands.
VigilantisM acceptable?
The ultimate question is whether vigilante justice is acceptable when the normal modes of law and punishment have failed. When the system places the overwhelming burden of proof on society and provides criminals and criminal lawyers with means to exploit an imperfect system, which every legal system is, then it is susceptible to failures. For citizens, the remedy is extra-judicial
self-help.
According to the view of one criminologist, vigilantism is morally sanctimonious behaviour aimed at rectifying or remedying a structural flaw in society, usually where the law is not enforced or is ineffective. Just as some might sympathise with the criminal as a victim of society, vigilantes see themselves as victims of a flawed society.
The phenomenon of vigilantism is not much studied and political scientists tend to treat it as a mere sub-type of political violence. But some psychologists and criminologists who are taking more interest in the phenomenon, see it as the ultimate act of good citizenship, an act that seeks to help the social order, as distinct from crime, as we understand it, which seeks to harm the social order.
However, a distinction should be made between criminal vigilantism when it is pre-meditated and serves criminal purposes ranging from hate-crimes to criminal enforcement and vengeance, and citizen vigilantism that is spontaneous, sporadic, and arises for self-defence.
Citizen vigilante groups can be crime control or social control groups. This view of citizen vigilantism is more sympathetic to a phenomenon which has had a disrespectable history associated, as it has been, with groups like the racist Ku Klux Klan, religious witch-hunts and political death squads.
Citizen vigilantes are active agents of a larger mindset in a society that see criminals, not as victims of society, but as people who victimise society and who live outside the social bonds and community ties that hold society together. It is this mindset that says 'let us take back our society from criminals'; 'let us put words into action' or that 'the police cannot do everything and citizens must do more for themselves.'
Vigilantes insist that the wrongdoer must be punished even if he is to be punished outside the law. They do not necessarily care for the police to finish their investigations nor for the courts to determine proof when the proof is evident from catching the person in the act, and when the institutions of justice themselves suffer from serious flaws.
The larger society will sympathise with vigilante action because the action is swift, final, and cost-effective. It satisfies society's need to punish for wrongs committed against its members.
It is this outcome and satisfaction that are more important than the procedures of justice. These procedures are seen as time-consuming, costly, uncertain, and unsatisfactory where the punishment, if there is any, is softer than the cruelty and harm of the crime.
Furthermore, justice systems (courts and police) often do not cover certain places, people, or wrongdoings, and citizens compensate with direct action of their own. Citizens' action of this sort cannot be equated with murder and those who take part cannot be dismissed by their action as criminals themselves.
They are often law-abiding people driven to protect themselves and to make justice work. Justice means protecting self, family, community, life and livelihood; and to protect those who make sacrifice to work honestly against those who prey on the honest citizen.
The term vigilante comes from the Latin root, vigil, which means 'alert' or 'observant'. In Spanish, it means 'watchman' or 'guard'.
These terms are suggestive of what the role of citizens should be in a democracy. However, even those who sympathise with vigilantism regard it as a danger to democracy and to a system of law and order. Defenders of citizen vigilantism say there is a greater danger to society posed by criminality. Extra-judicial self-help, a form of people's justice, becomes necessary if citizens are to act as watchman or guardian of democracy and law and order.
Vigilantism and Democracy
Vigilantism does co-exist with democracy. After two American men were arrested for beating up a child molester, a criminologist at Michigan State University said that this kind of street justice or street law was quite common in cases of child rape. A professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University said that people were likely to applaud rather than condemn such action and even to treat vigilantes as heroes.
He said he had seen a shift in vigilante activity in the last 10 years as people become increasingly disenchanted with a criminal justice system that they think does not work. Americans he said, appear much more willing to take matters into their on hands either by doing more to protect themselves or by going after the bad guys on their own.
Vigilantism has a long history and is on the rise in many countries. It can take many forms that are criminal and anti-democratic. But not all forms should be categorised as such. No one supports mob democracy but we must be realistic about democracy.
Democracy does not take care of all of us the same way. Some citizens who can afford it, are allowed to own guns and have a licence to kill in self-defence. Poor citizens who can only afford machetes, iron pipes and pieces of board, and who act together for their own self-defence, are called mobs.
If we believe in self-help and more direct forms of citizen participation in defending communities, we must find a way to organise citizens to police their communities in an acceptable and legitimate way.
Robert Buddan lectures in the department of government at the University of the West Indies. E-Mail: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jmSend your comments to infocus@gleanerjm.com.
