Last evening we had an interesting discussion at the Ideas Cafe on the practice of pardoning and removing criminal records from people who have served their time and have since been in good behaviour.
It was inevitable that we got involved in details of what is the current practice in Canada which none of us if sure of. But the more interesting discussion was with the overall handling of people who have been judged to have committed an offense against the law.
Richard suggested the view point that criminal record is a fact and we should not in general be suppressing facts of what had happened. It is better to look at the person as a whole including his/her criminal record and the kind of challenge they face and the adversity they had to overcome. The person with the criminal record may well be a better employee/volunteer/friend because of the life experience gained through the process. Pardoning and eliminating the criminal record only provide a false picture of this person.
There was general skepticism that our society is not ready for such frankness, that human resource department will automatically exclude people with criminal records without an interview and people's judgments will be unfairly biased.
Shula further pointed out that in peer review of academic papers, the practice is to have the author anonymous so that the reviewer will not be bias by professional jealousies and other personal preconceptions. So facts that are not relevant are best kept away to prevent bias that we all have.
Richard also suggested that atonement with the community affected by the crime is a better way of integrating the offender back into society. For the offender to come face to face with the damage done, victims affected, and hopefully eventually come to be at peace with the community that they have offended.
Shula put forward the view that she would not want punishment for the crime to be affected by how attractive the victim is. That the law is to judge the crime itself in terms of the act in order to preserve equal justice for perpetrator of all such acts without consideration of how powerful or beautiful the victim is.
Tina agreed with Richard that atonement with the community is a good way to go and that the court can hand out the judgement and sentences but that atonement with the community is a healing process for the offender to recognize what was done as well as for the community to accept some of the circumstances leading to the offence.
Raffi raised the difficulty of defining the community affected and the people to be involved in such a process, that perhaps in our current society, it is difficult to have people involved. Besides, the community affected is no longer just closed geographical circles. It can be international in scope for white collar banking crimes and the victims are sometimes difficult to define.
Through this discussion, what stands out to me is that the general public needs to know more about this subject as my perception is that the majority looks at having or not having a criminal record as an indicator of the probability to re-offend. Most don't realise that a small infraction such as being caught owning a small amount of marijuana in their youth may leave a criminal record for life and that hard crimes resulting in bodily injury can be pardoned after the offender have served time and in good behaviour within a set waiting period.
Richard also brought up the point that historically, pardon has been granted to participants of rebellions as a way of moving on after an uprising. Mano also mentioned that sometimes the justice system with its rigid set of rules can lead to a dead end and pardon is a way for a higher authority to exercise judgement on these situation.
This is somewhat opposite to Raffi's view in favour of having professional jury as is the case in some European countries. Raffi felt that having common citizens as jury may end up with examples like the OJ Simpson case where the jury discarded DNA evidence because it was too new a practice at that time. A professional jury with some training in logic and fact analysis will make a better decision here.
The problem I think, with a process that is overly professional without everyday citizen involvement is that it risk drifting away from what common citizens see as relevant to their lives. Professionals go by rules of engagement but it is the common citizen that can raise the point that the rules themselves may need to be revisited from time to time because the outcome is not relevant to what the whole justice system is about.
Lots to think about and we didn't even get to Sandra Zhou's comments !
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