Pardon's Like Going To The Candy Store

By Ben Meisner

At a time when Judges in the courts are becoming more and more the brunt of "light on crime" comments, the latest revelation indicates that 234,000 pardons have been issued since 1970, about thirty some thousand in the past three years.  You can't blame the Judges for that.

It is rumoured that Prime Minister Harper came unglued when he heard that the practice even picked up Graham James who was convicted in the sex crime of two hockey players, one being Sheldon Kennedy. At the trial it was revealed that James had molested the two boys at least 350 times over 10 years, which would, in any normal person's mind, suggest that this was pretty serious stuff.

So now we learn along with the Prime Minister that fewer than 800 of those pardons are people involved in sex crimes.

Judges who are being criticized for handing out "light sentences"  have been collectively voicing their anger over the fact that while the Judge sentences the individual, the Parole system simply circumvents that sentence by either providing early parole or in the case of James, a pardon which allowed him to slip south into the USA as a man without a criminal record.

Pardons may be well and good and do serve a purpose under some rare circumstances. To simply hand them out as though they were candy bought at the local store is not what Canadian society wants.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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