The difference is recklessness, a word previous user used.
Bad things happen even with reasonable safeguards in place - cars will keep crashing even if everyone is alert and sober, yet there is still a world of difference between a drunk swerving between lanes and a sober/attentive driver.
The fact that the criminal justice system, based around impartial trials, the right to defend yourself before your charges, and the assumption of innocence, will at times ensnare innocents is not an excuse to adopt the opposite system - i.e., the assumption of guilt, mob justice, and the lack of opportunity to defend oneself.
Put more practically, the difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice is its occurrence rate. Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket.
> Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket.
Any country that has an incarceration rate 5-10x higher than most other countries ("civilized" or not), I'd be real hesitant to call their wrongful convictions a "drop in a bucket".
I'd be in agreement with that argument if it were any other country. Still, vigilante justice is (of course) not a solution for the US because if that became commonplace, it'd be even worse. Less incarcerations, but you may not like what they'd get replaced with.
> "I'd be real hesitant to call their wrongful convictions a "drop in a bucket"."
That's not what I said. What I said is that miscarriages of justice in a vigilante environment would make the current US situation look like a drop in the bucket. The level of injustice that would exist in society would make people yearn for the days when we were imprisoning >1% of the country's population.
Bad things happen even with reasonable safeguards in place - cars will keep crashing even if everyone is alert and sober, yet there is still a world of difference between a drunk swerving between lanes and a sober/attentive driver.
The fact that the criminal justice system, based around impartial trials, the right to defend yourself before your charges, and the assumption of innocence, will at times ensnare innocents is not an excuse to adopt the opposite system - i.e., the assumption of guilt, mob justice, and the lack of opportunity to defend oneself.
Put more practically, the difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice is its occurrence rate. Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket.