You answered your own question
I'd be surprised if the reason they won't give out the address isn't simply that if they do and you do go and apply "rapid, forceful movements of [your] foot/fist into the shithead who was robbing" you, they're scared of being held responsible for aiding your vigilantism.
(xanthine, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 21:31, 1 reply)

The law doesn't work.
OK, I'll acknowledge that I didn't lose anything but I'd still like to ensure that these people either think twice about being criminals or be left incapable of thought at all. I'll happily take responsibility for my actions and can happily justify such to myself.

This may be because of my backround - I'm trash from Wood End, in Coventry, which is a charming den of iniquity.
I just happen to know of a few occasions where burglars, when caught, were not reported to the police (no point, if you lived in Wood End the police wouldn't even bother coming to the house - they'd just give you a crime ref. number - my mum was once told by a copper, after being burgled for the third time "Well, you live in Wood End, what'd you expect?" as if she was choosing to live there).
Instead the burglar was taken to a field, had some damage done and were left to think about what they'd done. This worked rather well as a deterrent, far more than the police ever were.

This is not to claim that all of the people in Wood End were criminal scum - most were not, despite what the rest of Coventry thought, but there were a fair number of interesting characters who were not exactly paragons of virtue.
(thebadangel, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 12:30, closed)