People, not history, should be held responsible for wrongdoing

It’s time we held the living accountable for their crimes, instead of blaming everything on history.

When the Supreme Court of Canada handed down the Gladue decision in 1999, it required courts, in sentencing Indigenous offenders, to consider the circumstances Indigenous Canadians have faced.

Objections arose on several grounds.

A number of Indigenous women complained that the resultant lighter sentences trivialized the import of the crime on the victims.

Why, they asked, should assaulting an Indigenous woman garner an Indigenous offender a lesser sentence than if the same crime had involved two non-Indigenous people?

Opponents of the Gladue verdict also pointed out that not holding adults fully responsible for their crimes creates a racebased infantilization. So it was probably inevitable that there would be Gladue-creep to other groups.

Last month, Ontario Superior Court Justice Shaun Nakatsuru decided not to resort to racebased sentencing for Jamaal Jackson, a black man from Nova Scotia with a long criminal record whose lawyers had argued, in essence, that his race should make him eligible for Gladue consideration.

However, while Nakatsuru didn’t go along with their argument in this case, he did say that it’s time for judges to “take judicial notice of slavery, policies and practices of segregation, intergenerational trauma and racism, both overt and systemic, as they relate to African Canadians.”

There isn’t an ethnic group in Canada that hasn’t suffered varieties of “intergenerational trauma and racism, both overt and systemic.”

And since everyone belongs to one ethnic group or another, or one race or another, then all criminals should receive lenient sentences. That would have to include Caucasians as well, since there have been plenty of complaints from them in the past few decades about suffering reverse discrimination in being hired for jobs.

A social worker in Halifax submitted a report to Nakatsuru that detailed Jackson’s difficult childhood, racism he’d suffered and racism suffered historically by black Nova Scotians.

Here’s what Jackson’s record contains: numerous violent robbery offences, dealing drugs in prison, assault and a firearms offence.

In one of the assaults, he attacked a passerby with whom he’d exchanged a couple of comments on the sidewalk. Out on statutory release for that crime, he later robbed a drug dealer and was sent back to prison.

His current offence, the one for which the Gladue argument arose, involved having a loaded gun, which was also a breach of a court order that banned him from possessing a weapon.

Here’s what the Parole Board of Canada said about him in 2014 when it commented on the 36 charges he racked up for his behaviour in prison, 16 of which were for serious crimes: “You have been charged with ignoring direct orders of institutional staff, being found in possession of contraband, fighting with other offenders, threatening correctional staff, being in possession of a weapon and inciting other offenders.”

The board described him as having “impulsive and violent characteristics,” which could be “exacerbated by the use of intoxicants.”

And he did all this because of systemic and historical racism?

I don’t buy it. Just like any other offender, he always had the choice not to commit crimes. Millions of people have been in tough circumstances, but instead of turning to crime, they chose to rise above their circumstances and make something of their lives.

There are government programs galore for job training, education, addictions help and the like, to assist people. It’s all a matter of choice.

Or rather, if personal and societal history can be used to justify acting in bad character today and committing crimes, then it can also be used to act in good character today, so as to rise above the sordid stuff.

Part of the argument in court was that blacks are overrepresented in Canadian prisons. OK, but anyone who is in prison possesses free will and didn’t have to end up there.