Archive | August, 2020

Canada’s Justice System -Abdication of Responsibility Part 2

9 Aug

In my previous post, I outlined that the goal of a justice system is not to fix injustice, but, to enable a just society by punishing unjust activity. It starts with the old axiom that two wrongs don’t make a right. It follows from there that punishments can only act as deterrent if the goal is to build a truly just society.

There is a distinct lack of will to punish criminals all over the modern West, in particular Canada, caused by a growing belief among jurists that incarceration is cruel and unjust. The Supreme Court knocked down a law mandating a minimum sentence for possession of an illegal firearm. If you were an anti-gun activist, you should have been outraged. The reason none were? The law punished the law breaker, not the gun.

In Canada and elsewhere, the rash of releases for COVID-19 has spawned a subesequent rash of crime.

It is not easy to deal out a just punishment. It takes a lot of courage to take the step of handing out discipline and assume the responsibility of the life of the incarcerated. Ask any parent how hard it is to discipline their own children but the rewards in future behavior are worth it. Modern leftist ideology has trouble with this fact. Unfortunately, the result is not just increased crime, but a society with a more tenuous grasp of the very concept of justice and morally inverted society.

Modern liberal minds find it difficult to muster the kind of courage it takes to punish criminals. Light bail conditions are given to violent criminals who then commit more crime. I don’t have statistics on crime sentencing in Canada – that’s not what this blog post is about. You can see incidents of generous bail conditions and light sentencing/early release resulting in more crime. If you want to search the database, you’ll be sure to find a lot: Peel , Toronto.

Recently, a young woman was killed by her boyfriend after he was released with a GPS tracker after being charged for possession of an illegal firearm. Despite having numerous domestic violence complaints, a nation that claims it is intent on cracking down on firearm violence by restricting gun ownership allowed a man to be released who was known to ignore release conditions who was arrested for GUN CRIMES!

But increased crime is just the beginning of a society that won’t accept its moral responsibility to punish criminals. By allowing the mindset to continue, morally outrageous crimes are absorbed into the zeitgeist of the country.

There are some crimes so unconscionable that the perpetrators must not be let out into the population to live normal lives. Doing so, only allow the moral errors grow within society.

Karla Homolka was guilty of some of the most heinous crimes ever to occur in Canada. But, the woman was released with a light sentence (11 years) so she could testify against her accomplice and boyfriend, Paul Bernardo.

She now lives somewhere near Montreal, Quebec raising children.

Every person must live with their past. Homolka must wake some nights with the sound of screams from her own sister and 2 other victims she helped murder. Perhaps she has somehow grappled with her moral failings and reached some type of internal redemption – a gargantuan task, a moral achievement of the ages. Even if somehow she is a guru of human moral self-forgiveness, the permanent stain on her soul must cause some unimaginable psychic pain.

Every person must live with their past. Homolka must wake some nights with the sound of screams from her own sister and 2 other victims she helped murder. Perhaps she has somehow grappled with her moral failings and reached some type of internal redemption – a gargantuan task, a moral achievement of the ages. Even if somehow she is a guru of human moral self-forgiveness, the permanent stain on her soul must cause some unimaginable psychic pain.

I have no idea what this sort of moral torture must do to a person. I live with my own past failings and sometimes struggle to reconcile it with the person I am now. But, someone responsible for this level of evil could not be mentally healthy without some miracle-level spiritual healing.

We have allowed this woman to rejoin society, live a normal life and raise children. How can someone who has such a past teach children about right and wrong. The children carry the mark on her soul themselves.

Imagine finding out that your child was friends with one of her children. Would you feel safe if they visited her house?

This is how evil grows within a society. Our society is morally lost and does not know it.

It is time to purge our justice system of its cowardice. Only a society willing to face its demons can maintain its path to righteousness. Rebuilding a righteous society from the growing heap of wickedness will not be easy, but the alternative is disturbing.

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Canada’s Justice System -Abdication of Responsibility – Part 1.

2 Aug

Most would agree that the purpose of the justice system is 3 fold.

  1. Punish Criminals
  2. Rehabilitate Criminals
  3. Protect Citizens

But few people today understand the meaning of justice or what a Justice System hopes to achieve.

Canada has a Department of Justice. That implies that the department is responsible for maintaining justice in the country through application of the law.

Is justice achievable through the application of law?

Or, is justice a consequence of a society with just laws, enforced judiciously.

Word salad? Let me clarify.

A just society is the result of judicious application of laws. The goal of law is to create a more just society by punishing criminals to reduce unjust acts upon one another.

Justice cannot be achieved by punishment. Justice is achieved by just behaviour. A justice system encourages just behaviour discourages unjust behaviour.

Think about this, law enforcement cannot correct an injustice. If you punch me in the nose and I call the police and you are charged and sent to prison, does that correct the injustice inflicted upon my nose?

The answer is no. It only punishes the culprit. By the time you go to jail, my nose may have healed completely or it may now be permanently crooked. Either way, the damage was done and cannot be reversed.

The punishment could be called just if it was carried out by a just legal system in a just fashion. The legal system can only cause more damage, it can’t correct the damage that was done. This is why the crime must be proven in a court. For a court to hand out punishment to an innocent man would just create further injustice.

It is a common fallacy that the goal of legal punishment is to correct the injustice. It is simply to late for that – what was done is done.

If, instead of bringing the legal system into play, I punched you back, we’d be even. Right? However, disputes left to settle themselves, rarely turn out that way. My punch could land on your chin and knock you out cold. Or, I could hit your eye and I’ve got a broken nose and you’ve got a broken eye socket – which is worse?

A just punishment is a measured response requiring somber deliberation. This is why it is called a justice system – even though it is really only a system of law.

A true Justice System attempts to make members of the society behave in just ways by inflicting punishment on unjust actors. It does not reward just behaviour. It only creates disincentives for people to behave unjustly toward one another.

The hope of a true justice system is that you would never punch me in the nose in the first place.

This post explains my thoughts on Justice in general. In Part 2 of this post, I will bring up actual cases to demonstrate why Canada’s Justice System is failing at its mandate.