Under British and Australian laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defendant’s past criminal record. This protects the person who is being accused of the crime.Some lawyers have suggested that this practice should be changed and that a jury should be given all the past facts before they reach their decision about the case

Do you agree or disagree?

Whether juries in criminal cases should have access to the defendant’s past record is a complex and apparently divisive question. The British and Australian judicial systems seem to subscribe to the old adage that a person is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, by offering a defendant some protection against their past. Lawyers who recommend a change to this law should be wary of over-burdening juries and of under-valuing the rehabilitative processes of the law. It appears to me that a dangerous ramification of such a change would be overcrowded prisons full of innocent people.

The judicial system employs juries to decide the fate of a defendant in a specific case. Comprised of ordinary members of the public, juries have enormous responsibilities. Apart from the obvious pressure of making the correct decision, they are often expected to understand and interpret complicated information presented in sometimes unfamiliar or technical language. To increase their workload by introducing evidence of previous crimes may interfere with the jury’s ability to see the facts clearly on the given case. It may be that they make their decision based on the defendant’s past rather than on the facts at hand. This could lead to innocent people being convicted.

Every defendant has the right to a fair trial, regardless of past misdemeanors. Those with a criminal past have often undergone some form of rehabilitation. This re-education, often carried out in prison by experts in psychology, sociology and other related fields, aims at correcting behavior considered dangerous and subversive. In Australia, a strong emphasis is placed on the rehabilitation of the criminal and it would seem that it gives some chance of assimilating back into society without re-offending.

We cannot simplify this problem by saying “once a criminal, always a criminal”. They must be treated as any other person in society. What if, through no fault of their own, they are implicated in a crime and, because their past record is admitted in court, the jury judges their character to be bad and they are wrongly convicted. The possibility of such mistakes occurring would be increased greatly if past criminal records are permitted. Each case should be judged independently on evidence and circumstances directly related to it, if we are to avoid innocent people going to jail.

To sum up, it would appear that British and Australian laws take a more compassionate view when judging criminal cases involving defendants with a prior record. This may be due to the confidence their legal systems have in the process of rehabilitation. To my way of thinking, the current system operates to best ensure a fair trial for all.