REWRITING HISTORY

Prolonged cannabis use has been associated with memory loss, a link
that perhaps goes part of the way towards explaining Green MP Nandor
Tanczos' promotion of a Bill to wipe out minor convictions, writes
The Evening Post in an editorial.

Mr Tanczos last week had his Clean Slate Bill selected from the
ballot of members' Bills at Parliament and would appear to have
sufficient initial support to at least get it to a select committee.

The aim of the Bill is to remove from people's criminal records their
convictions for minor offences seven years after they occurred. Mr
Tanczos says the Bill will not apply to "serious offences", only to
those where the sentence is less than six months jail. He lists
non-payment of fines, driving offences, possession of cannabis and
shoplifting among these. Anyone who has ever sat in a District Court
and watched judges bend over backwards to try to avoid sentences of
imprisonment will know it will apply to other crimes as well. Mr
Tanczos says the Bill is about helping people who have "truly
rehabilitated" to overcome their past.

It's not clear why he assumes that after a period of seven years
anyone is "truly rehabilitated". The Bill makes no reference to
someone convicted of a driving offence having to undertake so much as
a defensive driving course. A shoplifter may simply have become more
skilled at thieving through years of practice since the last
conviction. Those convicted may not even regret the misdemeanour that
earned them a conviction in the first place. Some, like
anti-Springbok tour protesters, wear their convictions with pride.
Strip them away and the highlight of their careers in civil
resistance will be diminished.

The Bill will doubtless provoke impassioned debate. Already ACT NZ is
promising vigorous opposition, saying the right to forgive and forget
belongs to ordinary New Zealanders, not the State. The Bill proposes
a form of revisionism. And like no-fault accident compensation, it
represents another step in eroding the concept of individual
responsibility.

There are people who carry convictions they enormously regret. For
them, the conviction itself is often the most significant part of the
punishment. But that is the price of a person's misdemeanour and
their challenge is to rise above it and prove the action that
incurred it was an aberration. The stigma of a conviction is what
holds many law-abiding people back from succumbing to the temptation
of committing an offence. By diminishing the weight of a conviction,
Parliament would undermine a well-understood precept of our justice
system.

There is little evidence that old and minor convictions remotely
interfere with people living their lives. For those who carry a
conviction as a dark secret, it stays that way and if many people
knew, they probably wouldn't care anyway. Mr Tanczos says the Bill
will provide an incentive not to re-offend. There already is an
incentive not to re-offend - you don't want a second conviction.