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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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to kill all the criminals - but who can only kill the ones who the justice system has already caught

inaccurate, there are some cases shown where Death Note vigilante kills criminals before they could be caught

Depends on your definition of "caught". He can kill identified criminals before they're punished (though this is very much a minority of his kills), but not unidentified criminals (unless he happens to witness it personally; I know his second kill is one of these, and the "associates" L brings in for the Yotsuba investigation might count, but I don't recall any others). He has no special powers of investigation, which is the real bottleneck in the criminal justice system.