Duane “Dog” Chapman and vigilantism
How involved should citizens be in law enforcement? Old school Europe doesn’t believe that all problems should be mediated by society. Sometimes, it is just too personal.
Citizen Bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman joined me today to chat about his new book You Can Run. But You Can’t Hide today on Maritime Morning. He’s also in Halifax on a speaking engagement.
Manure makes great fertilizer and, in the early life of Dog Chapman, there was a lot of it. Call it character fuel, maybe a bit too much: an abusive father, and a hard scrabble upbringing turned Dog from crime and time to transformation and peace of mind – no mean feat. Most who have gone through that kind of upbringing don’t make it out of their past, even if they can see it and smell it, mainly because they feel that they don’t deserve success.
As a character, and as a media figure folk hero, there is a strong cord that is being touched upon here with the public. But what it speaks to is less comic book hero/wrestler theatrics meets Good Samaritan, than it does a promotion of the fantasy of citizens taking the law into their own hands against the muddied moral clarity of bureaucracies and legal systems.
As someone who was involved in taking he law into their own hands when a close friend was raped in 1985, I understand this mentality, and I am torn regarding aspects of condemning it.
If everyone took the law into their own hands there would be anarchy. But is it realistic to say that Old Testament notions of vengeance are irrelevant? While Dog Chapman is only a facilitator of the legal system rather than its’ substitute, he still plays in the broader notion of the action-man in the name of justice.
If your son or daughter were raped would you really be happy with how the system would look after it? Some people cannot bite their lip that long.
My guess is, if someone messed with Dog’s family he would hunt him down, like all the criminals on his TV show, and look after business.
He would then turn himself in and do his time. But is that justice?
What was that Old Testament for anyway?
August 25th, 2007 at 6:51 am
The Old Testament is recorded history. It is recording events as they actually happened. Sometimes people look at the OT and say, “look, God is so mean and so violent.” And admittedly, there are definitely some aspects of what God commands that I struggle through. However, many times people’s actions in the OT are seen as “from God” when God had nothing do do with it. It is the difference between prescriptive behavior and descriptive behavior. Much of the OT is descriptive (explaining what happened) and NOT prescriptive (this is what they were supposed to do).
As far as the present justice system, I am not at all pleased with how criminals are dealt with. I fully admit that it is a very difficult system to understand and that there are MANY factors that one has to consider. For instance when we say as a society, “They need to do more hard time” we need to understand what repercussions this has on us fiscally. It is expensive to keep people behind bars. I am not saying that they shouldn’t do more hard time, just that often when we say, “They need to do more hard time” we are not considering all the implications.
I can say that if it were my daughter or sister or friend who was raped and I saw the rapist getting out of jail early or walking free or not even prosecuted… let’s just say that I have a great degree of empathy for those who have taken the law into their own hands. I was deeply moved by the great book and movie “A Time to Kill”… and put in the same situation, can’t help but think I may do the same thing.
Cheers!