This book describes a pervasive and destructive problem afflicting our current justice system, one that is eroding community confidence in law enforcement. The authors call it shadow vigilantism –a vicious cycle in which ordinary people, as well as criminal justice officials, are so fed up with the system’s failures that they distort and subvert the system to force it to do the justice that it seems so reluctant to do on its own. The effects of this lack of trust are pervasive and pernicious- citizens refuse to report a crime or help investigators; jurors refuse to indict or convict; and officials manipulate a system that is perceived to be unreliable. This downward spiral eventually undermines the moral authority of law enforcement and creates widening rifts in the community.
The authors examine many examples of how the community has responded when the justice system is perceived to fail. The cases they cite include the infamous murder of Emmett Till, which became a cause that spurred on the NAACP and the civil rights movement; the Lavender Panthers, which formed in response to gay bashing during the 1980s; the Crown Heights Maccabees, a neighborhood watch group that successfully reduced neighborhood crime when the police failed to do so; the Animal Liberation Front, which struck back at institutions for perceived abuses to animals; Operation Perverted Justice, an organization that used online chat rooms to out pedophiles by publicizing their personal information (affiliated with NBC’s To Catch a Predator); and many others. Photos are provided to illustrate these important cases.
As the authors stress, all of these examples highlight the importance of upholding a justice system that works to provide justice for all and is not perceived to condone legal technicalities that overturn just punishment, judicial rules that suppress evidence and let serious offenders go, and other actions that undermine public trust in the system.