Making pardons tougher to obtain is harsh and unfair
TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – The Harper government is making it more difficult for those who made a mistake to get a pardon and become full members of society, say a former chief justice of Ontario and a leading criminologist.
Jun 17 2015. By: R. Roy McMurtry Anthony N. Doob
A few months ago, a 20-year-old man without a criminal record pleaded guilty and received the mandatory minimum sentence for his offence: three months in prison. His offence was simple and there was no dispute about the facts. A 14-year-old girl had asked to spend the night with him. The two went to bed and kissed, but did not have intercourse. Her mother found out and he was charged. The maximum penalty was 18 months. The prosecutor could have opted to proceed in a manner that would have required a sentence between one and 10 years, but chose otherwise.
Parliament legitimately decided that what he did was an offence. The question is whether he should be labelled a sex offender for life for his one mistake? He freely admitted to the police and the court that, in his own word, he had “f—ed up.” We would agree, and he paid for it with his time in jail plus two years of probation with various restrictions, his criminal conviction, and being subject to the conditions of Canada’s sex offence registry for 10 years. But should he be labelled a “convicted criminal” forever for something stupid he did when he was 20? If at age 40 this is his sole offence, should he still bear the consequences (such as being barred from some jobs) because he has a record recording a single criminal offence committed decades earlier?
Criminal records are common: Public Safety Canada data suggest that 23.2 per cent of Canadian males over age 12 (and 4.3 per cent of females) have criminal records.
There is a formal way to get past some negative effects of criminal records: the pardon. When the issue was originally debated in Parliament in 1970, the Liberal solicitor general of the day, George McIlraith, said pardons were desirable because of the “apparently unjust consequences that still attach to a person who had been convicted of an offence, but who has long since rehabilitated himself and become integrated into society in a wholly satisfactory way. The consequences, in those circumstances, of having a conviction can work many injustices.”
Property offences, drinking-driving offences, and drug possession constitute the most serious offences for 76 per cent of those receiving pardons. The vast majority — 97 per cent — of those pardoned have remained crime-free, according to the Parole Board.
The Harper government has dramatically restricted the availability of pardons. People convicted of certain offences are never eligible, although the conviction can have devastating effects on employment opportunities. People now must wait five or 10 years before applying (depending on the seriousness of the offence) rather than three or five years. No evidence was provided of the need for these changes.
The changes reflect the government’s views about offenders. Pardons no longer exist; instead the record can now only be “suspended.” Harper clearly wants to deny to anyone who had offended years or decades earlier the possibility of being a full member of society.
The application fee for pardons went from $50 to $150, and then to $631. Why? In the words of then-Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (now a Harper-appointed judge in Manitoba): “Ordinary Canadians shouldn’t have to be footing the bill for a criminal asking for a pardon.”
For the government, the status of “criminal” is a defining characteristic forever. When it was forced by the law to consult Canadians on this 421-per-cent increase in a government fee, its own report shows that of the 1,086 Canadians who volunteered their views, 1,074 (or 98.9 per cent) opposed the increase. Only 12 people supported it. Nevertheless, the government increased the fee, explaining that without the increase “demand will … exceed the (Parole Board’s) ability to meet its legislated mandate.”
The Parole Board recently told applicants who had applied for pardons for more serious offences before the law changed that their applications “are not being processed at this time,” and that “there is currently no time-frame estimate” as to when they will be. The explanation is clear: though people are legally eligible for pardons (having applied before the law changed), the government won’t follow the law. In other words, if pardon applications can’t be legally refused, they simply won’t be processed.
People make mistakes. And people change. But for Harper, there is no getting past a criminal conviction. At best it might be suppressed. For him, people are defined by the worst thing they once did. Stephen Harper’s Canada represents a dramatic break with Canada’s past.
R. Roy McMurtry is a former attorney general of Ontario and chief justice of Ontario. Anthony N. Doob is a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of Toronto.
< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/06/17/making-pardons-tougher-to-obtain-is-harsh-and-unfair.html >
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology
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