We were historically terrible at identifying predators and mostly let them alone to victimize or if their victims were less important destroyed victims lives as a matter of course leading to wide scale silence by victims.

We have less crime by far and prosecute more scumbags than we did 50 years ago.

Communities "handling" bad folks by individual violence never worked worth a shit because communities have always cared about whose more important than who is right and it doesn't meaningfully scale which is why it never worked worth a shit it real life.

In order to deal with shit heads you have to have a dispassionate authority whose job it is to prosecute shit heads who isn't politically bound to give a shit about your penny ante local bullshit and the expectation that local yokels will properly do their job and push shit up the food chain or be held accountable.