Taking justice into your own hands is not a solution – 12/08/2023 – Deborah Bizarria

Anyone who has social media or accesses the newspapers must have seen the videos of robbery, aggression and then the action of “justiceiros” in Rio de Janeiro. The scenes reflect the almost general inability of Brazilian states to provide both security and the feeling of public safety. In numbers, Brazil has 11 of the 50 most violent cities in the world for homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Amidst the fatigue of violence and the disbelief that the State is capable of resolving it within the legal process, some people resort to means outside the law in an attempt to resolve the problem or acquire a feeling of justice. On this topic, Karl Aquino and other researchers conducted a study to understand the motivations of vigilantes.

The authors defined vigilante identity, the English term for vigilante, as “a sense of oneself as a moral agent who has a duty to protect society from threats, even if doing so violates laws or social norms.” Then, they conducted two experiments with questionnaires on perceptions of whether they were victims of crime, whether they felt the desire to take justice into their own hands and exposed to hypothetical scenarios of norm violations and their willingness to monitor and punish.

The results were not surprising: those individuals who perceive themselves as victims of crimes are more likely to adopt a vigilante identity and to support severe punishment of offenders, even outside the law. Also according to the authors, the perception of victimization can lead to a feeling of moral superiority, applying punishments even without concrete evidence.

Although these feelings of anger in the face of the offenders’ strong sense of insecurity and impunity are understandable, the action of justice only worsens the violence. Judicial and public security systems were created to prevent the masses’ anger from generating even more injustices by not taking into account the presumption of innocence, the weight of evidence and proportionality in relation to the crime. It is no surprise that the action of vigilantes is also a crime, adding even more work to a police force that is no longer able to prevent, monitor, investigate and arrest criminals.

To reduce the incentives for more people to want to act on their own, the political class and public managers need to show concrete actions and intelligent security plans. Solutions include reforms and the adoption of good international practices, such as the implementation of a Single Police Report facilitating the transition of information between the reporting and investigation stages, greater sharing of information between the police, continued training for the police and the adoption of body cameras to increase the legitimacy and trust of the population.

There are other measures, such as the adoption of standard operating procedures and regular supervision by superiors and the internal affairs department and a target program, with co-responsibility of the municipalities, to coordinate the management of police and intelligence resources between federative entities. It is also necessary to coordinate external control mechanisms, through bodies of the Public Ministry and the Army, with the aim of reducing violence and police corruption. Furthermore, we need reforms in judicial and criminal procedures that can adequately punish to reduce incentives for crime, respecting the human rights of victims and prisoners.

Until these measures are taken, however, it is necessary to emphasize that self-justice leads to an escalation of violence and an erosion of the rule of law.

Fighting crime is done with intelligence, strategy and following the law. Every easy, quick and anger-based solution will not solve it.

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access five free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.