This is a link to the Policy manual of the Parole Board of Canada, citing the conditions for pardoning someone who served their sentence.
http://pbc-clcc.gc.ca/infocntr/policym/polman-eng.shtml#annex_a1
In looking at the eligibility table for pardon applications, it lists the time period after which applications for pardon can be submitted. This includes serious personal injury offenses that required imprisonment of 2 years or more which requires a 10 year waiting period.
Does this mean that even serious criminals can apply for a pardon after a 10 year wait?
What are the chances that their pardon will be granted ?
It would be great if those of you out there that may be more familiar with the parole and pardon system can shed more light on this, or better still, come join us at the discussion!
Quite apart from the particular details of the Canadian system of granting pardons, it is interesting to discuss how we should deal with those among us that have broken the rules we set up for our society.
On the one side, we have portions of the society that feel that criminal records should be permanent. After all, what is the use of a criminal record that can be erased or concealed when criminal record checks are used to prevent these previous transgressors from taking up positions that involve trust with children, significant assets, or other forms of public trust?
We also have people that would rather have "criminals" be thrown behind bars forever and would even favor capital punishment as a way of getting rid of the problem.
On the other side, we have the argument that we should be reforming rather than punishing, that we should be aiming at reintroducing these "criminals" to become productive member of society.
http://www.pardons.org/about_us.html
But what of the safety risk to the rest of society in attempting these reforms and do reform always work?
Are there "hard-core" criminals that are not reformable? What do we do with them and how do we decide who they are?
From the general public's everyday life perspective, is criminal record a good indication of a person's character and reliability?
Is the absence or presence of a criminal record too much of a black and white test that put too much petty crimes in the black category?
If so, how do we introduce a better criteria?
It is often said that forgiveness is the victim's power to take charge and release itself of its victimized status. Without forgiveness, the wound cannot heal and the victim remains a victim.
When and under what circumstances should we forgive and forget without being naive about it?
Come Wednesday and join our discussion!
The criminal justice system, like many other systems, has a kind of dynamic equilibrium. If you bring in harsher and less forgiving treatment in one part (say prisons), then the system shall adjust towards rebalancing (say, courts) towards less harshness. And, vice versa where you may wish to be less harsh.
ReplyDeleteOn another topic, threat assessments often relate to having someone designated as a dangerous offender. Often "psychopaths" are evaluated. The Psychopathy checklist is a semistructured interview. But in order to determine psychopathy, sometimes previous criminal behavior and records are used. Is it fair to determine future imprisonment on the basis of types of past imprisonment? How can it be done in practice without bias?
ReplyDeletePunishment shall fit the crime...
ReplyDeletePunishment should fit the crime...
ReplyDeletepost by Dan
ReplyDeleteI now tend to ask myself if technology can assist. Consider this:
The criminal record remains as publicly available e.g. on line, as do the documents vouching for/opposing the pardon request.
The objective would be to put pressure on those doing the vouching to be confident of their support and willing to face criticism if that later proves to be misplaced.
Similarly it puts pressure on the person granted the pardon to justify the confidence placed in him/her.
The website by Pardons Canada mentioned that once someone is pardoned, they cannot be discriminated against on reason of their previous criminal record. Therefore, by definition, their previous criminal record will not be public after the pardon.
DeleteThe technology is there but it is our justice and social system that needs to decide what we should do with criminal records.
That is a wonderful remark. It is important to make a distinction between what is an “artificial” label (i.e. criminal records, social insurance number, bank credits, income tax forms) and “natural” label (i.e. privileges and freedoms held on the basis of the human nature). The truth is, most of us have never met Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, Robert Pickton, or any other notorious “criminal”. Yet, just the mention of their name can arouse unadulterated vehemence. Beyond the legal and “artificial” label, the common “criminal” vernacular has symptoms of a scapegoat mechanism – an entity as a projection for blame, disbelief, and Girard’s “mimetic contagion”. Do records make a person a “criminal”, or does “criminality” make records? Ultimately, the only practicality is “confidence”, intuition, and the willingness to work things out when they don’t.
DeleteI wanted to add a short comment on victimhood:
Take the example of Take Back the Night marches, from the perspective of Katie Rophie in her book, “The Morning After, Sex, Fear, and Feminism”: “Take Back the Night is an umbrella march covering fear in general, frustration in general…”; “These are women who have grown up expecting fairness, consideration, and politeness. They have grown up expecting security. Considering how many things there are to be afraid of and how many things are not fair…”; “To be apart of this blanket of warmth…students are willing to lie…Mindy had spoken at Take Back the Night for each of her four years at Princeton…Mindy also claimed she was swept up in the heat of the moment…If Mindy’s political zeal and emotional intensity blurred the truth of her story, one wonders how many other survivors experienced a similar blurring.” Despite accusations of being an insensitive feminist l’enfant terrible, Katie Rophie makes a very pragmatic remark on the role of victimhood. There is a difference between being a victim of fate – social injustices, inequities, and a victim of our own destiny – learned helplessness, inferiority complex. It is natural to feel aguish and sorrow; feelings are automatic responses to events, whether positive or negative. The problem comes when one adopts passivity to constructively appropriating these feelings into adaptive responses; instead, one perpetually plays a position of powerlessness and labels themselves as victim. By identifying responsibility for the effects and empowerment of our own actions, we can stop being a victim of fate and grasp the reins of our destiny.
Great comment on victimhood Sandra. Hope to see you at the meetings.
DeleteHi there :). It would have been wonderful, but I am very sorry I will not make it today again, I am feeling a little fatigue. I hope everyone is doing well :) Here, roughly labeled, are the main ideas I had in mind:
ReplyDelete1. To debate law, we should first abandon the arguments that follow any “oughts”. Infinity, relativism, “sacred” values, and the “ought” of form should not be juxtaposed with finiteness, reductionism, “taboo” values, and the “is” in argument. The nominal “ought” was appointed by David Hume, as a means to reach a prescriptive conclusion. In order to reach a prescribed outcome, one must assume a prescribed premise: the presupposed “ought” of a given “circumstance” – the “is”. The imbroglio arises as one attempts to justify the efficacy and influence of the “ought” in derivation from the “is”. Since the “ought” is presupposed and directs and describes the “is”, to derive the “ought” from the “is” would result in a fallacy of reductio ad absurdum – a contradiction. This quandary can be observed in the relativist and reductionist contradictions in Pure Theory of Law by Hans Kelsen, a well known legal scholar in the field of jurisprudence. Kelsen introduced a system of legal normativity. He believed that all norms in a legal system originated from a “basic norm”, an “ought” deemed by an agent in a given situation as the most validated action. This creates a conundrum in defining the correlations between “artificial rights” and “natural rights”, as legal normativity is deemed arbitrary and descriptive of the situation, rather than obliging to the situation. Thus, Kelsen had relativized Natural Law to a superseding Positive Law. Proposing on an “ought” is an inconvenience to debate. For example, in the debate of pardons, one might suppose that, a criminal “ought” to be life sentenced and “ought” not to deserve any pardons because they have committed a serious offence. Such an argument sides towards a fallacy of argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad verecundiam – the authority resting on the presupposed “ought”, and a possible fallacy of petitio principii. I believe that instead of debating from the lens of Positive Law, we should from that of Natural Law; using the lens of non-secularized and ubiquitous morality and reason.
2. I came across an interesting, and somewhat humorous paper this morning titled, “Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions”. The link is here: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/tetlock/Vita/Philip%20Tetlock/Phil%20Tetlock/2001-2003/2003%20Thinking%20the%20unthinkable....pdf. In our economic and socially interchangeable society, insisting on the commitment to a certain non-fungible value often comes at a price. The pressure to meet this “cost” can result in a “trade off”; a taboo trade off (sacred versus secular value), a tragic trade off (sacred versus sacred value), or a “neutralized” trade off (finding a conditional that moralizes the “contamination” of the sacred value and then trading for another secular value). For example, in the debate of pardons, a taboo trade off might consist of the sacred value as interminable justice versus the secular pardon services; a tragic trade off might consist of the sacred value as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the victim versus the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the accused; a “neutralized” trade off might consist of a relented sacred value of the victim’s integrity, by conditionals that stress the need of societal integration of the accused in prevention of further perpetuation, and the secular value of granting a pardon.
3. Aung San Suu Kyi, the nobel peace prize laureate and leader of the Burmese National League for Democracy, said in a broadcast on Liberty: “A friend once said she thought the straw that broke the camel’s back became intolerable because the animal had caught a glimpse of itself in a mirror.” Current pharmaceutical, cognitive, and at times even dialect therapy are often contrived on the notion of symptomatic palliatives. It is in most cases that criminal offenders have a pre-mediated, pre-existing history of mental illness, stress, anxiety, embitterment, fantasies, resentment, and rage. Criminal rehabilitation should recognize not only the “straw” that broke the camel’s back, but more overly the history in the mirror that caused the camel to become intolerable.
ReplyDelete4. In the current narcissistically vulnerable and ego-centered society, the “daimonic”, or motivational and catalytic force that inspires individuation – the unity of the Jungian Self, is often neglected. This neglect can, somewhat paraphrasing David Bohm’s words, isolate and fragmentize components that should not be, and consolidate pieces together that should not be. Such an incoherent whole of the Jungian Self can result in a pseudo Dr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll division, resulting in outbursts of tantrums, anger and Jungian “shadow values”- the repressed collective values of the personality. By denying criminal rehabilitation, we further subdue our “shadow selves”. Through existential psychotherapy, offenders have the chance to become aware of their underlying consciousness, and come out of Virgil’s Hell.
Thank you very much, have a lovely time! :) Next week, I hope I’ll make it :)
Kind Regards,
Sandra