While pretty much the entire country can agree that there needs to be some amendments, I can’t say Harper’s direction is the one we should take. I understand where he’s coming from, and the emotions that drive these amendments, but I simply cannot agree with them.

I believe in rehabilitative justice. Not the kind of rehabilitative justice that allows Karla Homolka to walk out of prison with a free university education, but the kind that would prepare prisoners for release and put them on a program to literally pay back their debt to society by working off some or all of the money spent on their imprisonment.

So, I disagree with Harper’s view that harsher penalities will deter crime. This is often used to advocate the death sentence, and as we can see with the United States, it simply doesn’t work that way. Violent criminals either act on compulsion, so they don’t think about the sentences, or they act with deliberation to avoid being caught, in which case they can obviously rationalize their need to be violent is greater than the risk of whatever punishment could be brought upon them.

But this is not new. I’ve always disagreed with views like this and I expected it to come up this election. Harsher penalties for violent crimes is always a hot button election issue. What I didn’t expect was amending the part of the YCJA that protects the identities of minor offenders.

I’m sorry, but if you are tried as a minor and sentenced as a minor, shouldn’t you be protected as a minor? If the crime is serious enough that you are tried as an adult and found guilty, then treat them like an adult and expose their name. But we can’t give judges the right to expose minors who are tried and sentenced as minors, no matter what the crime, especially for offenders as young as 14.

“In this new legislation, the main purpose will be not only to rehabilitate young offenders, but also to protect society, and the primary goal of sentencing will be to deter others from violating the law,” Harper said at an event.

Protecting the name and record of young offenders is a part of rehabilitation. It allows those who are successfully rehabilitated (and, like everything else, it is easiest to do this at a young age) to move on with their lives.  This proposal appears to include no other amendments that actually concern rehabilitation of young offenders.  I find that incredibly concerning.