Not saying that this is what I do, but a VPN is useful for things that are illegal but not serious.
For example, France is spying torrent downloads of copyrighted content but they only look at the domestic consumer ISP IP addresses. They ignore all foreign IPs, so if you're using a VPN it doesn't matter if the VPN keeps all the logs they won't bother.
Of course if you're doing things that will get you personally targeted by the police, like cyber-bullying or CSAM, a VPN won't protect you.
For example, France is spying torrent downloads of copyrighted content but they only look at the domestic consumer ISP IP addresses. They ignore all foreign IPs, so if you're using a VPN it doesn't matter if the VPN keeps all the logs they won't bother.
Of course if you're doing things that will get you personally targeted by the police, like cyber-bullying or CSAM, a VPN won't protect you.