Well, you don't always hear about vigilantism in the media. For instance, a girl was raped at a bus stop in Naples, Florida, back in the 80s. She was able to identify her attacker. Suffice to say, the perp will never be arrested; there will never be a trial; the case will never offocially be solved. But no one else will ever be raped by that perp.
Smart, you exploited a loophole in my argument! Really, I should have seen that one coming. I must admit I smiled at the way you explained the outcome. I expect he met his match at the hands of a family member (
not a lynch mob, I expect), and in fact, I know a few similar situations myself -
Gary Plauche - Wikipedia (a classic) and
Father Who Beat Son's Accused Rapist Speaks Out - YouTube. BTW I honestly cannot fault the latter - the father seems to have managed to find the
perfect line between enough and too much and I really admire him for that
Let me clarify my argument for more data freedom - if, like I'm quite sure of, the rapist's sentence was hastened at the hands of a family member, then I don't think it is a relevant counter-argument, since the "jury" (in this case) would have learnt the information regardless of my proposal or not. What I meant by a lynch mob is a group of people
unrelated to the case who (by my proposal of more data freedom) learn about a(n inoccent, perhaps) suspect and go and do something stupid.
I guess what I am proposing could be called "responsible vigilantism". I think there is a balance - "responsible vigilantism" would be a system where police and sleuths work together on the raw clues and don't really get into the conviction side of things (which even the police don't, so for the sleuths it should be even less). And a prime example for "responsible vigilantism", you may ask? Don't **** With Cats (
Don't **** With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer - Wikipedia), as I said before. I find that there is very little to fault them for. As soon as they found Magnotta they handed him over to the authorities and washed their hands of it. They didn't even go looking for him (or initate the mystery in any way as some other vigilantes do) -
he posted a video which came onto their feeds, effectively forcing their involvement into the case (and I think most people would have felt compelled to something in such a situation).
Also, I don't know much about bounty hunters, but from what I have seen and know about them, I honestly would be more worried about the level of power they are given than my proposed system. They are literally given the go-ahead to capture a criminal dead-or-alive. And apparently that has also lead to some terrible outcomes too:
Several bounty hunters have been arrested for killing the fugitive or apprehending the wrong individuals, mistaking innocent people for fugitives.
[26]
Bounty hunter - Wikipedia
My point is - if we can have bounty hunters with quite significant amounts of power, why can't we have some co-operation between police and sleuths on cold-cases, some of which are so old that there wouldn't even be chance of mistaken identification of a suspect.
P.S. Sorry for the slightly rambling post. I'm trying to improve my argument for my proposal with your constructive criticism but find that I can't seem to keep up with my thoughts/ideas at times![/quote]
