![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2010\/11\/idiocracy-shirt.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Canadian House of Commons sent a bill {S-6} back to the Senate that would have done away with the Faint Hope clause<\/a> {\u00a7745.6 of the Criminal Code of Canada-pdf<\/a>}<\/strong>. The clause allows prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment with a parole eligibility of greater than 15 years to apply for early parole if they have served 15 years. {Canoe News was alluding to the idea that this was politically motivated, in the wake of Conservatives in the Senate killing an environmental bill, C-311}.<\/p>\n The Conservatives have been wanting to get rid of the faint hope clause and may eventually get their way. The Conservatives’ stance is that it re-victimizes the families by having them prepare at an earlier date for parole hearings. A Toronto Sun columnist, Jerry Agar, isn’t interested in rights and rehabilitation of convicted criminals<\/a><\/strong>. He wants tougher sentencing and the elimination of the Faint Hope clause for the sake of victims. In my mind, this brings up a fundamental question. Does society view the criminal as forever “bad” or is even the most notorious criminal subject to rehabilitation?<\/p>\n Moreover, while the rights and safety of the victim shouldn’t be discounted, at what point does the weight of a victim’s impact statement have more gravitas than the evaluations of a prisoner’s current state. I wonder about government intervention when it comes to the wishes of the victim. The attempt by California courts to get Roman Polansky extradited from Switzerland<\/a><\/strong> in spite of the victim’s wishes after her civil settlement makes me wonder what the guidelines should be. Specifically, how should prosecutors and the courts balance a victim’s wishes and the interests of justice?<\/p>\n One factor that may be influencing this is culture. European sentences for homicide can be lenient by North American {US & Canada} standards, but there appears to be a cultural norm that tough sentencing is a deterrent and metes out justice for the victim. While “vengeance” may be a strong term, I recall watching a HBO documentary on capital punishment about a decade ago and much of how the death penalty was framed was to help the victims obtain closure.<\/p>\n I suppose much of this boils down to whether one believes in rehabilitation. Are the Jimmy Boyles {Scottish gangster and convicted murder turned artist and writer} merely outliers in the annals of crime and punishment?<\/p>\n Twitterversion::<\/strong> [blog] Do You Believe a Murderer Can Be Rehabilitated?: Canada’s Faint Hope Clause Clings to Hope\u2014for now. @ThickCulture<\/a> @Prof_K<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Canadian House of Commons sent a bill {S-6} back to the Senate that would have done away with the Faint Hope clause {\u00a7745.6 of the Criminal Code of Canada-pdf}. The clause allows prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment with a parole eligibility of greater than 15 years to apply for early parole if they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1518,9043,9041,9042],"class_list":["post-3252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conservative-party-of-canada","tag-criminal-law","tag-faint-hope-clause","tag-parole"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3254,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions\/3254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}