The constant threat to justice anywhere is false accusations, and this is the main reason why due process exists. Mob "sanitization" isn't due process. In France at least, I've never heard about such incident towards "thugs". Mob violence is always politically charged.

Ive known small scale violent (against a person and/or their property) 'mob justice' in poor & marginalised communities that dont trust the police/law

Also seen ad-hoc non-violent community justice - shunning /expulsion in the same communities

Aware of some use of restorative justice.

Not sure about the theory & effectiveness of most justice / legal systems. Costs are great & results poor

Friend recommended Justice on Trial by Chris Daw QC. Podcast with him was good

Are we still talking about France for the small scale violence?

For the ad-hoc non-violent community justice, there are the informal speech groups between women in many organizations to warn each other about sexual harassers/offenders within that organization when law enforcement fails to act on them, which matches your description of marginalized communities that don't trust the police/law (for good reasons).

About the cost/effectiveness of justice systems, lowering the former increases the likelihood of justice errors, and the latter seems too hard to quantify to perform a reliable comparison between systems.

I was talking about the UK. Imagine its the same elsewhere though.

WRT justice systems. Incarceration, dished out at a great cost (keeping someone in prison is hugely expensive) is supposed to act as a deterant. Reoffending rates and rising prison populations (at least here in the UK but I think it's a common trend?) suggests it doesn't appear to achieve whats got to be the main, socially useful goal of reducing dangerous/damaging activities.
@JonathanMBR

Ah, yes, I agree with you, prison isn’t a good deterrent, and it leaves detainees worth off once they did their time. But, at least in the UK, prisons “only” represented 46% of the Ministry of Justice budget in 2020/2021, so there’s more than prison to ensure justice.

Im also not fond of how the legal system here (and I imagine everywhere else) works
Its unnecessarily complex. Have to understand the weird language, protocols (traditions?), the ways to present your position. If you got the money you can afford to pay someone that knows how to do all this well and are likely to get far better results
Legal professionals get to charge a load of money (another significant part of the costs) by being well versed in how to navigate all this @JonathanMBR

Its almost like it is a system created (over time) by rich and powerful people, which was designed to benefit them, over people with less resources? @JonathanMBR

I get what you're saying and it's definitely been used as such, especially in the US where lawsuits are a national sport, but I think it's a byproduct of the complexity, not the original intention. I believe due process is inherently complex, and the law itself is complex to map a complex reality. Like I said earlier about reducing the cost, making either of them more straightforward increases the likelihood of justice errors.

After all, a mob "sanitizing" thugs is straightforward, right? But how do you define "thug"? What did they do to deserve this label? Who said they did that? Do "thugs" deserve to die at the hands of such a mob?

All these questions require a complex law framework to be answered, which puts it out of reach of most folks, requiring the existence of professional lawyers. Many countries have some sort of aid to make lawyers available to people who can't afford their services. It isn't perfect but again, a simpler justice system is unlikely to be a fairer one.

Just to be clear - im no fan of mob justice!
Also no fan of how justice is commonly understood & implemented.
Tends to be very authoritarian & all about the punishment

The legal system here was built by those who had power and resources (goes back far further than universal sufferage). Either conciously or subconcoiously they have constructed it to align with their perspectives & interests

This bounced across my timeline today & feels relevant https://honey.town/@bee/109121044889360957
@JonathanMBR

I would tend to separate "justice system" and "criminal law". Usually the latter evolves more than the former as it depends on the political color of the current government. It's true that most Occidental countries have had conservative governments over the past 50 years and so the criminal law has been focused on punishment according to the conservative political ideology which I personally disagree with.

So yes, the outcomes of justice systems depending on increasingly conservative criminal law will be increasingly authoritarian as it is the ultimate goal of conservatism: a rigid pyramid hierarchy where the base gets absolutely no say.

But authoritarian has many meanings. A team of Mastodon moderators can be authoritarian in the sense that there are no recourse against their decision and yet can be fair if they act in accordance with a clear Code of Conduct. So I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that.

Thank you for the link, it was interesting!