Modern Day Vigilantism

Authors

  • Jacob T. Nolan

Abstract

Vigilantism is a social phenomenon where ordinary citizens break social norms by enforcing justice on their own without the help of law enforcement. This review focuses on examining the current state of research on vigilantism and places where more research should be done. The majority of research on the topic has been focused on areas on countries experiencing or recovering from major social or physical conflict, like South Africa and Northern Ireland. However, some new research is slowly being introduced on changes to the concept of vigilantism, exploring new frontiers like cybervigilantism. In order to learn about what is known on the topic, a broad spectrum of articles from places like ProQuest and Google Scholar have been acquired and examined. Each article has been considered by itself and for the impact it has on the field as a whole. The results of this review indicate that there is not a huge amount of research done on the subject, and the majority of information on vigilantism is qualitative and not quantitative in nature. Some holes exist in coverage of the topic, with a lack of quantitative studies, minimal work on cybervigilantism, and no exploration of the culture of prison vigilantism. It is important that more research be done on this field because as the times change, instead of going away it seems that vigilantism changes as well. Innocent people are often wrongfully targeted or caught in the crossfire of vigilantes. Understanding why vigilantism occurs can help protect those who would be wrongfully targeted, repair mistrust between law enforcement and citizens, and perhaps provide an interesting look at human motives and views of justice.

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Published

2016-12-10

Issue

Section

Articles