The National Pardon Centre™

I was reading an article the other day about how teenagers in American who fool around are subject to arrest as sex offenders. To most of us who have even the vaguest recollection of being a teenager this sounds like paranoid insanity and the truth is not far from it.

In most cases two teenagers engaging in sexual activities are imune from the law because we all know that human nature has a way of taking us hostage, esecially when we are young, full of hormones, and prone to doing stupid things that we would never even dream of as an adult. Children need to be protected from adults who would exploit them, not from themeselves. So what has changed?

The problem is that with the proliferation of cell phone cameras kids engaging in sexual play are, understandably, prone to take photos of themeselves and then circulate those photos among friends. And once that happens a bunch of nut jobs in the American judicial system, brainswashed by right wing propaganda, have decided that this behaviour must be stopped at all costs. And of course the only way to stop this behaviour is prosecution. The logic: teach a few good kids a really nasty lesson and others will learn from it. Patent nonesense.

We acknowledge that kids are kids for a reason; because they are KIDS! They do not yet have the capacity to make adult decisions. Charging a teenager with a sex crime as an adult because she posted a topless picture of herself on myspace is a classic example of paranoid delusion. This is creating a problem where none exists and ruining the life of a young person because her actions offend the sensibilties of only the most conservative section of modern society.

Obviously we do not want our kids taking pictures of themeselves in compromising positions. That is not being argued because there exists a segment of society so twisted that we have a global industry circulating child pornography. But let’s fight the real fight. Let’s go after the people who are actually sex offenders. Go after the pedophiles who exploit children and throw the book at them. There is no question about that because there are bad people our children need protecting from.

And admittedly our children need protection from themeselves from time to time. But when two consenting teenagers fool around and take a picture of the activity a crime has not been commited. When a young girl takes a picture of herself and sends it to her boyfriend a crime has not been committed. We don’t need teeangers applying for pardons because they did something foolish in a moment of passion. And we don’t need teenagers registered as adult sex offenders. This helps no one.

This is policing at its worst. Allow me to make a small comparison. This would be like a busting a hippie commune for growing weed when a bunch of crystal meth crack dealing junkies are pushing their smack on preteens two doors down the street.

Why do we have so much trouble fighting the real fight?

When this picture of Michael Phelps smoking a bong surfaced the world once again went loony, insisting that Phelps make amends for something that everyone does anyway. What nonsense.

The fact that an olympic champion of Phelps’ stature has smoked weed is a clear indicator that marijuana is relatively harmless, great fun on accasion and obviously the grand champion of substances that should be decriminalized. Is there any other conclusion to draw from this?

I am quite certain that no photos exist of Phelps sticking a needle full of herione in his harm. I am also quite certain he has never smoked crystal meth. And I am equally certain he has smoked weed on more than just this one “regrettable” occasion. Which is really the core of the problem. Not all drugs are equal and continuing the global farce that is marijuana prohibition is dumb.

Another part of the problem is that the United States of America (I was tempted to write “of hypocrisy” but it just seemed childish) is so far entrenched in the war on drugs that they cannot get out of it even if they wanted to. An industry that big doesn’t get demolished easily and there are a lot of people intersted in maintaining the status quo as far as marijuana legislation goes.

My guess is that it will take the supreme court to rule that marijuana legislation is a violation of basic rights before the federal laws will be changed. And by then the feds will just be playing catch up to the various States, that realized long, long ago in a time far, far away that the criminlization of marijuana is just plain stupid.

There has been talk of criminal background checks becoming part of Canada’s passport application but nothing seemed to be actually happening. I’m still not sure if it is but this article explores a little bit of the issue.

There is also talk about pardons being mandatory for those applying for a passport but I believe there are enormous hurdles to overcome before that will be possible. In the meantime have a quick read of the article below:

Canada’s passport agency phasing in criminal checks

Jim Bronskill
THE CANADIAN PRESS

From thestar.com
 
OTTAWA-Canada’s passport office is still finalizing a system to check the criminal background of applicants, almost four years after the federal spending watchdog first flagged the security gap.

The office has also dropped out of a national project to devise a quick electronic means of verifying the data on birth and citizenship certificates, used by applicants to obtain passports.

The lingering challenges come to light as Auditor General Sheila Fraser prepares to deliver an update next month on Passport Canada’s progress toward fixing various problems identified in April 2005.

At the time, Fraser revealed Passport Canada was hampered by inadequate watch lists, outdated technology and poor record-checking.

She found the agency lacked ready access to information about people wanted by police or on probation. The data are contained in the Canadian Police Information Centre database, known as CPIC, administered by the RCMP.

Passport Canada set up a link to CPIC in 2006 and subsequently conducted two data trials.

A “significant investment” would be needed to fully usher in CPIC checks as part of a new computerized case management system, says a recently published progress report from Passport Canada on meeting the auditor general’s recommendations.

“The magnitude of the process is under review before implementation can occur.”

Passport Canada spokesperson Sebastien Bois said the agency is taking a “phased-in approach” to screening applicants against CPIC.

“We’re linked with the system. We’re using it. But our approach right now is based on risk-management models.”

The agency is checking applicants only when red flags trigger suspicions, particularly given the huge volume of people seeking passports.

“With 4.8 million applications a year, it’s a lot of applications,” Bois said, adding there is no target date for deciding if and when all people seeking travel documents will face a criminality check.

“We’re looking at all the options.”

In recent years, Passport Canada has faced a crush of applicants concerned about meeting stringent new U.S. border requirements. As of June 1, Canadians will need a passport or other approved, secure document to enter the United States by air, land or sea.

As of last May, just over half of Canadians held a valid passport, up from 41 per cent in 2005.

Three years ago, it emerged that an alleged Russian spy used a fake Ontario birth certificate to obtain passports in 1995, 2000 and 2002. He was later deported to Moscow.

In her 2005 audit, Fraser warned that Passport Canada had no easy way of verifying proof of citizenship.

The passport agency stressed its involvement in the planned National Routing System project, intended to establish links to provincial and territorial bureaus of vital statistics and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This would allow agency staff to prevent fraud by quickly scrutinizing birth and citizenship data on applications, as well as checking the person’s name against death records.

The initiative, now under the wing of Statistics Canada, has moved beyond the pilot stage but Passport Canada is no longer among the participants, said project manager John Menic.

“They had to pull out. They had some operational priorities with the backlogs they had a couple of years ago and they decided to step back,” he said.

“I haven’t heard from them for a couple of months now.”

In its June 2008 progress report, Passport Canada says that while it continues to support work on the routing system, it “is now concentrating its resources over the next 18 months on its core mandate” of issuing passports.

Last month Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said Canadians applying for passports face serious security risks – including identity theft – because of flaws in every step of the process. She found problems in how personal information is collected, stored used and ultimately discarded by passport officials.

Passport Canada insists security has improved, noting in its latest annual report that an electronic link with the federal Correctional Service helped it deny passports to 44 people forbidden from leaving Canada.

It intends to proceed this year with a long-planned program to use facial-recognition technology to prevent the same person from holding more than one passport under different names.

It also aims to introduce a passport containing data on an electronic chip by 2011.

You know those ads on TV where everything just works out, and at the end of the Christmas holidays your credit card bill is zero? The last thing they say is something along the lines of ”if only life was that easy!”

If only! True enough. I sometimes wish that at the end of the day all of the problems were solved and the dinner was made and my favourite show was on TV with no ads, no interruptions, nothing to distract me from relaxing for an hour.

Now considering what business I am in I talk to a lot of people who wish that after they had been arrested, gone to court, paid the fines, finished probation, performed the community service, etc. etc, etc. the criminal record would just magically dissappear when the ordeal was finally over. And in fact many of the people I speak to actually think that is the case. Only there is a little voice in the back of their head telling them they know perfectly well that criminal records do not disappear automatically. Otherwise they would not be calling me in the first place.

What I am trying to say is that when it comes to criminal records, and pretty much anything to do with Canada’s legal justice system, there is no Get Out of Jail FREE card…period! It does not exist.

So if you have a Canadian criminal record then you need to take the step necessary to ensure that it is properly removed. In other words you need to get a Canadia pardon. Otherwise you are taking a rish with important things in life like your career, freedom to travel, etc.

Trust me what when I say that if your record comes back to haunt you retrospect will tell you one thing very loud and perfectly clear. A pardon is a small price to pay for a clear criminal record!