Justice Tempered With Mercy

by Conrad Black (March 2014)

When questions and comments were called for, and there was a pause, I indicated a desire to speak and made a comment before posing a question. I noted that we had had ups and downs but throughout our relations of 40 years spanning his entire public career, Roy McMurtry had never wavered in his efforts to temper justice with mercy, to try to make the law equitable, and to make due process as accessible as possible to the economically and socially disadvantaged. The audience, of about 150 people I would reckon, applauded Roy warmly and he deserved no less.

But where there is a substantial constituency of imprisoned or otherwise supervised people who are without any audible spokespeople for their interest, not an interest to break the law, repeat offenses, or evade condign punishment but to advocate effective remedies, feasible rehabilitation, and the concept that discharging the imposed penalty wipes the slate clean and permits a new beginning, a democratic state must provide for that constituency to be heard. Instead, this government is promoting a Manichaean vision of rigid good and evil, and an unforgiving and permanent ostracism of offenders. This is, in itself, an evil concept.

All people are sinners and all are good and bad in differing degrees at different times. I am not a moral relativist and am a believer in law and order, the confession and repentance of sin, and the punishment of crimes. But I also believe in forgiveness where the adjudicated penalty has been served, there is remorse and a determination to avoid past misconduct, and I favour every reasonable incentive to make the correctional system a repair shop of flawed personalities and consciences and not a junk-yard of human souls.

The scant relative numbers and impenetrable odium that afflicts those convicted of crimes make this a slow-burning issue, but it gnaws constantly at the moral fibre and conscience of this and other societies. Penal reform is a challenge whose time will come. It will not permanently be obscured by the sort of cynical posturing that Roy McMurtry, with the authority of the unchallengeable expert on the subject and former senior standard-bearer of the governing party that he is, imputed, unfortunately quite plausibly, to the current federal government last Sunday in a pleasant house of worship in Toronto.

(Also published in the Huffington Post.)

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