Fairness For Criminals

Should criminals be treated fairly?
These are the people who have violated someone’s rights. Criminals who have taken people’s lives and even the lives of innocent bystanders. Criminals who treated their spouses and families like rubbish and with violence. Criminals who are now being prosecuted, yet who are still on the streets spreading fear. Or they could be someone sitting beside you now. Once again, do they have the rights to be treated fairly?

Victims’ rights, morality and justice are not the only issues a judicial system should support. Above all, a judicial system should have fairness for everybody. We all have the right to pursue justice for what we have had suffered and we must have it fairly. Nonetheless, the ones who put us in that position should suffer also or even be punished for what they did. Am I right? However, as we pursue what we want, we tend to forget that the ones who did the crime still have their own human rights, even though they violated the rights of others. We would think, “Why would they still have their rights if they had offended someone else’s right? It is unfair, some of you would say. Now, I am asking to you, did you ever think or did it even come to your mind that once a person violated the law, you usually or sometimes conclude that his/her rights, as an individual living in a civilised society, should be abolished?

I believe criminals still have the right to defend themselves and have any legal representations they need. Many defence lawyers are often being misunderstood, even suspected of placing loyalty to clients above loyalty to society, and are associated with the misdeeds of their clients in the public mind. The very fact that a defence attorney represents a guilty client leads some people to conclude that the lawyer also must be untrustworthy like his/her client. Consider what these defence attorneys’ who represent scum, killing criminals, are really seeking for his client? They want fairness for all, even to these criminals. You might say right now that I am only bluffing about these interpretations. Well, here’s my evidence.

I had a family friend who was once practising defence law in Oklahoma City who is now spending his life in a wheelchair back in the Philippines. He had represented a man who was accused of beating his wife, which he really was. However, the Oklahoma Police Department failed to read him his rights and tortured him into confession while he was under custodial interrogation. He was tortured into confession! Nevertheless, the confession could not be used as evidence, and the judge had to dismiss the case. What is the connection of this case into what I am saying? My family friend had been treated badly, almost killed by half of the people in Oklahoma Police Department because they thought that it was his own fault that the man who was guilty in doing the crime was free and not serving time in jail. Three Policemen tried to harassed him in and out of his house, let his car brake loose and led him to have the accident that made him crippled. The criminal had been treated fairly and his own rights had been re-established because of his lawyer, yet the lawyer was treated badly. What a complete noble men these people are. Pursuing justice at all cost even though they have to set aside the suspect’s rights, they are just criminals after all. Are they being fair?

Another example of unfairness in a judicial system concerning criminals is how hard they are being punished. I reckon every one of you would think it depends on what crime he/she had done. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, punishment fits the crime. Although that punishment should be from absolute product of careful investigation and above all, a fair trial. Think about Saddam Hussein’s execution, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging which was subsequently affirmed by Iraq's Supreme Court of Appeals. Which I think is what he really deserved, isn’t?

Well, I have one story to tell again. In 1987, an Austin, Texas jury found a man named Jimmy Lee Page not guilty of murder, but 20 years later, he remains a prisoner. Disregarding the jury’s verdict, the Texas Parole Board revoked Page’s parole. Page’s case is, apparently, a common practice in Texas. Two years ago, 91 parolees were returned to prison after being charged with a crime, even though the charges against them were later dropped or they were acquitted in court. Page had pled guilty to a 1975 murder and served 11 years of a life sentence regardless of the Jury’s findings. Not only Page did not receive the clearance from the crime he didn’t commit, but also he had served more than a decade of his life for it. Could that be fair enough?

May you be on the victim’s side or criminal’s side or you could be the one who is affected by the law violation itself, we all deserve to be treated equally. We deserve to be treated fairly. We deserve to be treated equally. Not because a person did a crime, it doesn’t mean that he/she deserves to be treated differently. They might have done the most horrible thing a man could ever imagined, criminals are still human who still have the rights to be executed. Although some of you would think that doing horrible thins such as killing people eliminates them as human and be some kind of devil. The only thing I would say to counter that is, I guess, as a human, a person has to have someone who feels compassion and concern for them above anything else and above any horrible things; they did or had been doing. If they don’t have anyone at all and if we add those people whose being unfair and judgmental against them, is that could be an enough reason to pursue justice and fairness, being a man living in a civilised society ? Once again, criminals do deserve fairness.

****partly true, partly made up. You just decide what.***

Belonging and Possessing

How do you feel when you do not have a place to belong? How do you feel if you crave for something that you do not have? The novel, The Divine Wind by Garry Disher has encouraged me to consider the importance of possessing something as your own in today’s society and having the feeling of belonging in today’s society. Although, the book talks about generally the effects of war, I think this book tells us that the war itself originated from people’s idea of belonging. The characterisation, plot or events, and the setting described in the novel have helped me to consider these ideas.


Have you ever stopped and thought about why people [countries] declare war with each other? The book’s plot is generally about the World War II and its effects on people caught in the middle. However, can you consider the real cause for this war? In today’s time, the basic reason for war is that the country wants something from the other country and ‘they’ will even go to extremes to acquire it. Therefore, we can say that war starts from greed and the craving of people for the things they want to belong to them. Greed and contentment are hard to separate once a person starts acquiring things that sometimes leads to discontentment, jealousy and war. “I looked at Jamie Killian, so healthy and vital in his uniform…And so I began to drift in life,” stated Hartley Penrose. Hartley’s feelings of insufficiency because he was handicapped had made him feel discontentment and jealousy. Because of this jealousy, he did not trust Mitsy’s love for him and remained blinded for such a long time although, Mitsy had once really loved him.

Greed and the desire to possess still exist in the society today. In 1991, the first President Bush issued a ringing statement calling on Iraqis to "take matters into their own hands", rise up against Saddam Hussein and the American Government will support them. Can you consider that every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, all signifies a stealing from those who hunger and not being fed, those who are cold and are not clothed? Hunger, death and divisions have come from a person’s idea of pursuing what he thinks the right thing to do for his country although in doing so might affect thousands of people. and greed. After all these kind of sufferings, it leads me to think that one’s idea of possessing and belonging are important in moulding a peaceful society.

The character of Ida Penrose in the novel provides a perspective of one of the ways on how an individual adapts to his/her community. The sense of belonging is an essential part of being a person. If you feel you belong to your community, socialising and mingling is easier for you. However, for example, what if you are the Ida in the real world. What if you do not like what you see in your community? You try changing it to a place where you will fit and into a place where it suit your preferences. What happens when you feel like you’re failing in changing it? You give up and run away, then conclude that the place does not want you to belong to it. “We were too careless, too democratic for her taste. Our lives revolve around the seasons and the sea…”, Hartley Penrose stated about Ida. That is how the character of Ida has been created in the book, but some people also do that in reality. People try to change anything to suit them and possess it as their own. They blame anything when they fail to do so. People who are fully involved and participating with their community, which means socialising and having a sense of belonging, don’t change anything. They simply accept it as it is and adapt with it. Belonging and adapting to a place is very important in today’s time because the only way to a nation to stand up is to have its citizens stand as one.

In one of the chapters of the novel entitled, ‘Dim the Moon’, Hartley described how the Japanese, Malay, Filipinos and many “non-white” citizens living in Australia back then had to be interned and arrested because of suspicions. “Hey, Penrose, I hear you’re running a brothel. Got a pair of Japanese whores.” This was how Mitsy and her mom had been treated when the war had started. People felt that because of their race and physical features they could be classified as “whores”. This is a classic example of racial discrimination and the community’s part in a person’s feelings of belonging. When people feel that they do not belong to a place and they are being ‘discriminated’ against, the feeling of being estranged exists. They feel that they lack something and they start to crave for that thing or they try to be accepted. This kind of feeling can serve as an inspiration to some people but sometimes it could also lead to antisocial disorders like sociopathy. Even though there are laws now that will ensure equal rights, there are always people who discriminate against foreigners and immigrants. Recently, I and a group of Asian students encountered a teenage group of ‘emos’ in the street and they scowled at us saying, “All you bloody Asians, go back to your own country.” Now, how would you feel if (you are on our own shoes) that happened to you?

Possessing things and belonging to a place are very essential for building one’s individuality and also, for building a society that is beneficial to everybody especially in today’s time. With the help of the novel’s characters, events described, and the whole plot, I was inspired to consider and to react about some of the real issues that should be important today.

****partly true, partly made up. You just decide what.***