Justice Blind

According to this Toronto Star article the Toronto Police mistakenly released an email suggesting a press release should be issued to the media detailing the rights of people accused of shoplifting and the limits of citizen’s arrests when a storekeeper was once again accused of beating a shoplifter.

Two of the three storekeepers accused of bundling a suspected shoplifter into a van and beating him on the weekend were involved in a similar incident in 2001, according to a Toronto police email.

On the face of it the shopkeeper’s alleged response does seem a mite extreme, although, often profit margins are often barely above costs in small stores, and if it meant the difference between feeding his family or not, I can understand the shopkeeper's response.

But isn’t this really the only logical response when the courts only hand out the merest punishments to convicted shoplifters? If justice isn’t seen to be done - why bother with the courts at all?