Conservatives Don't Understand Freedom

[mbarrick]

When you pick up a gun and commit a crime you lose your right to be free.

From now on the justice system will stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and send you to jail for a long time.

— Stephen Harper

Nice sentiment, sure to get support from the backwater rednecks and easily the panicked sorts that elect these fascists.

What they are talking about here, hiding it behind the newspeak "reverse onus", is eliminating the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and replacing it with a presumption of guilt. Much like the Americans doing away with habeas corpus, this flies in the face of the fundamental qualities that differentiate free countries from authoritarian tyrannies.

Section 11(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states states pretty damn clearly: "Any person charged with an offence has the right ... to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal".

Comments

[dream-king.livejournal.com]

how about just for murderers. Perhaps, pedophiles, serial rapists, and serial murdered.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

The problem being that the death penalty is not a deterrent to the genuinely psychotic. A psychotic person, by definition, has a very limited ability to understand cause and effect (or even none at all) and really doesn't care about consequences. Meanwhile, because the punishment is absolute a mistaken conviction becomes an irreversible act of murder.

Better to put the person away for life (and *really* for life, not 25 years with the opportunity of parole after 5) and extract valuable work from them. I'd rather see the sorts criminals you mentioned sent to gulags in the far north to dig in mines or other such undesirable activities.

Make the punishment horrible enough to deter the people who do have a sense of consequence but make productive use of those who wouldn't be deterred anyway, as well as leave room to someone to survive and be compensated for an error in the courts.

[dream-king.livejournal.com]

You are right on all 3 counts, however, given the bleeding heart judicial system that we have, one has to have other options.

If not capital punishment, then at least allow for consecutive jail terms instead of the current, concurrent which makes a joke of it all, all for true life sentences, such that the only time the person will be out of jail is when s/he literally breaths his/her last breath.

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

I would definitely support a prison gulag system or exile in the far north.

As for the death penalty, whether it's a deterrent or not matters little; what matters is these fuckheads won't commit crimes again. But I do understand and see the need for absolute proof for a conviction - that has to be there as well.

I guess the problem I see with our legal system is people no longer have any sense of respect for social authority nor have to account fully for their own actions. They no longer fear the consequenses and ramifications of making poor decisions. It seems that the buck can be passed far too easy... "I did it because I'm poor, or got mental problems, blah blah etc. " Hogwash!... because there are a lot of poor and retarded people who don't commit crimes and act responsibly within our society.