The Last Exile

The rage of the month for the Harperites is pardons. The thingie you can get after you have served your time for a criminal offence and prove you have lived a life free of crime for at least 5 years. Toronto Star:

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper drew mixed reviews Monday for bemoaning the fact convicted killer Karla Homolka will be able to apply for a pardon later this year.
The prime minister cited Homolka’s looming eligibility for pardon as one of a series of frustrations he has felt in the last few weeks about the weaknesses in Canada’s justice system.

Bringing up Karla Homolka makes great political theatre and gives the Harperite base the match to stroke the flames of outrage over the pardon process in this country but let me carry the water on this one.

The Prime Minister can table legislation from now to the cows come home but whatever legislation he drafts will never exempt Homolka from the pardon process for one simple fact. Homolka plead guilty to manslaughter and manslaughter is the unintentional unlawful killing of another person without malice, either express or implied and the unlawful killing may be either voluntary by virtue of acting upon a sudden impulse, or involuntary.”
Let me give you a typical example. Two 19 year olds get drunk in a bar. Drunk A takes offence at something Drunk B says. Drunk A throws a punch at Drunk B who blocks it and pushes Drunk A away from him. In the act of pushing Drunk A away Drunk A hits his head on the edge of the bar and dies.

Now you can argue that Homolka’s plea for manslaughter didn’t fall within the perimeters of manslaughter but give the current circumstances which were known at that time; her ‘crime’ fell within the boundaries of the legal definition of manslaughter. If you wouldn’t pardon Homolka then you cannot pardon Drunk B even if he served out his time, kept the peace and was of good behaviour which is why I maintain good intentions always make for bad law.

The pardon process was designed to be the carrot to induce an criminal to rehabilitate and reform himself and if you take away the inducement to seek rehabilitation and reform there isn’t any carrot left if you insist on punishing an offender long after his sentence ends. Sure that means all kinds of unsavory people who you wouldn’t knowingly invite into your family could potentially get a pardon but life is filled with all kinds of unsavory people…and most of them never have a criminal record.

Pardons are designed to make it easier for a reformed criminal with a proven track record of good behaviour to make a legal living easier after their debt to society is paid off in full. While some would argue that the low rejection rate of applications is a sign of the innate flaw in pardon system but I would counter that its actually a success since the vast majority of people who apply to receive a pardon have a proven track record of living ‘crime-free’ lives.

Everyone should be asking themselves why the Tories, who already took a look at reforming pardon legislation back in 2007 decided there wasn’t a fundamental flaw within the current system and now, three years later – arbitrarily decide it is time to re-examine the process and rise the bar on pardons. Some will think I have suddenly become ’soft’ on crime but really I am just soft on bad political theatre masking as ‘tough on crime’ stances.