Should we condone this sort of thing, asks Steve Green at the Daily Referendum?
This man was subjected to the painful tarring and feathering on the Taughmonagh estate, a loyalist stronghold in [south Belfast].
Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.
Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.
A small crowd including women and children looked on as the men then adorned their victim with a placard reading: "I'm a drug dealing scumbag". (Daily Mail)
After umming and aaahing I had to come to the decision in the end that no, we shouldn't. This is vigilante justice, and as pleasurable as it may be to do to someone who is known as a criminal, it is, in the end, just wrong.Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.
Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.
A small crowd including women and children looked on as the men then adorned their victim with a placard reading: "I'm a drug dealing scumbag". (Daily Mail)
We have a justice system for a reason. As much as the Ministry of Justice may be bent on destroying it - such as by letting criminals out before they have served their sentences - it still exists, and must continue to do so. To give into this sort of vigilante justice, just asks for terror to return to our streets, just from people claiming to uphold the law and peace rather than those who know that they are breaking the law in what they do.
Even though an ICM poll today says that "a majority of voters think the government should scrap its prison building programme and find other ways to punish criminals... [with] 51% of those questioned want[ing] the government to find other ways to punish criminals and deter crime," I don't think that they were quite thinking of reviving the old punishment of tarring and feathering. Even though the Guardian article suggests it in their analysis, I doubt that a majority really want the prison building programme to be scrapped or criminals not to be sent to prison, but that other alternatives should be found to go alongside prison sentences.
To allow any backtrack down the route of tarring and feathering criminals - especially those who haven't been convicted of a crime - would be a huge mistake on all sides. It would lead to nothing but trouble for law-abiding citizens. We can't condone this sort of unilateral action any more so than we can the acts of the [suspected] criminal. After tarring and feathering, what next? The stocks? Pillorying? Trial by ordeal? That's not justice.
Sources: Daily Mail, The Guardian
