Yet another mob killing was reported in The STAR on Thursday, this one in Treadways, Linstead, St Catherine.

It was reported that residents hacked Gary 'Tommy' Rhoden of Deeside, also in Linstead, to death after they caught him breaking into a shop in the predawn hours.

There were no reports of anyone being held by the police in connection with the killing and we suspect that, as is invariably the case in instances like these, no one will be charged.

No doubt the members of the mob will believe that justice has been served, but they would do well to be aware of the perils of this form of street execution.

For while what they perceive to be justice has been done and certainly seen to be done, it sets the tone for a certain lawlessness in the area, an entrenched lawlessness. The official apparatus of the state has been circumvented and it is certainly not a stretch of the imagination to see some persons setting up themselves as the unauthorised dispensers of justice in the community.

This is not, of course, something new, as informal courts are a feature of the garrison phenomenon, this as the machinery of the state has been perceived to fail or has been ignored.

So there is another, graver peril in mob justice, that the court system becomes a mere figurehead. And that would affect everybody, including the members of the mob that killed Gary 'Tommy' Rhoden and any group of citizens in Jamaica who decide to take the law and someone's life into their own hands.