Canadian Criminal Justice System Essay

Words: 445
Pages: 2

In nowadays’ Canadian society, a good criminal justice system is necessary for the overall protection and safety of our community. In order to ensure the well being of all citizens, it is important that our criminal justice system carries out justice to all Canadians. Not only must our system be capable of balancing out the punishment of offenders and the protection of victims, but it also must be able to prevent and reduce crimes. As the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees to protect all Canadians’ rights and freedoms, the Canadian criminal justice system should ensure justice to be served right. Even though the Canadian criminal law controls actions that can potentially be harmful to the state, there have been various miscarriages …show more content…
Wrongful convictions and overturned convictions can lead to great injustice. These miscarriages of justice demonstrate to what extent the criminal justice system can sometimes be wrong. Accordingly, when justice is not served right it can lead to negative short-term and long-term consequences on one’s physical and mental health. As Irazola, Williamson, Stricker and Niedzwiecki (2013) observed, most victims of wrongful convictions reported feelings of guilt, fear, anger, isolation, depression, and at least one of them reported having suicidal thoughts (p.11). Furthermore, the most commonly reported physical impact was sleeping troubles, including lack of sleep, fatigue and unpleasant dreams (Irazola et al., 2013, p.11). As an example of a case that has seen great misjustice, the case of Guy Paul Morin shows best how our Canadian system failed by wrongfully convicting an innocent man. The accused was charged with the rape and murder of Christine Jessop, his nine-year-old neighbor, in Toronto (“Executive Summary”, p.1). It was after two trials and 18 months of imprisonment that he was freed, as DNA tests proved his innocence (“Executive Summary”, p.2-3). As a result of this case, I can conclude that individuals do not always get the justice they deserve and that our criminal justice system needs to improve in serving justice equally to all