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Notes -
The last argument is one for corporal punishment over prisons, not for mob justice.
And the big issue with mob justice isn't that thieves get beaten up, it's that sometimes the person getting beat up didn't actually do anything except be an outsider and look funny. Or more generally, that the less formal the mechanisms of justice, the more they become about social standing. India does keep popping up in international news about various gangrapes and coverups thereof because the rapists are friendly with/members of the police, which is enabled by the same mechanisms that enable your beatings.
Gangrapes and coverups are far less common than petty thieves and hooligans getting a beating or two, and if the former is the cost of minimizing the latter, I'll take it.
In the vast majority of cases, the person being beaten up isn't some poor bastard in the wrong place at the wrong time, but someone caught pickpocketing, trying to snatch purses and the like. Those don't make international news, whereas sectarian strife and rapes do, so the West had a grossly skewed perspective.
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