When I was growing up in a medium sized town in Africa. The community was particularly active when it came to apprehending criminals be it a thief or someone wh

When I was growing up in a medium sized town in Africa. The community was particularly active when it came to apprehending criminals be it a thief or someone who had just assaulted a woman. The young men of the town would chase down the criminal. They always got caught because everyone would participate. The alleged criminal would then be frog marched to the nearest policeman. Look perhaps one or two members of the public would throw in a punch or a kick at the thief but mostly they just held him. The last thing you wanted was to be charged for assaulting a criminal. Anyway other vigilante communities were not as gentle as in my town and alleged thieves got seriously hurt and couple even died from mob justice. So there was a big drive to stamp out the public apprehending criminals. This introduced some uncertainty and sometimes people don't act. In short we are making the right laws and making people aware of them. But sometimes the effect is that we are left uncertain hence we don't act.