In the bad old days of Jim Crow and before White Supremacists used to argue that Blacks lacked self-control and needed to be punished more harshly to ensure that they were kept in line.

The Left today now argues that Blacks lack self-control and hence should get more lenient sentences for crimes because they can’t be held responsible for their actions.

Same reasoning. Just a different lesson taken from the presumption that Black people are not quite fully human.

The theory behind lenient race-based sentencing is that it benefits a community, but in practice it deprives them of justice — while undermining the fairness of the system for everyone.

I covered a recent decision by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal:https://t.co/DAXrCyLh4H

— Jamie Sarkonak (@sarkonakj) September 5, 2023

Jamie Sarkonak covered the case and the reasoning of the courts for a lenient sentence for a father impregnating his daughter just blows my mind. It is as if the Canadian elite–its judges and politicians–have simply tossed away any idea of equality before the law and given in to the notion that the racists were right: your skin color is the most important variable in life.

Normally, incest would be punished with a jail sentence: two years on the low end, and 14 years maximum. Applying progressive sentencing principles, a majority of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decided late August that the father should only have to serve two years of house arrest (more reasonably, the dissenting judge believed that four years in jail was apt).

I freely admit that I have no real idea what the proper sentence in this case should be. Both the father and the daughter are mentally challenged, and I do believe that in such a case the mental capacity of the offender should be taken into account, as it properly was.

But the judges didn’t stop there or even base their decision on the mental deficiency of the defendant primarily. Instead, the judge went straight to race and argued that “African Canadians” cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way that others can be.

While the Crown established, using past cases, that a jail sentence of four to six years was normal for this kind of crime, the appeal court dismissed this as merely a guideline. The court also noted that the offenders, in previous cases, were not African Nova Scotians. When deciding whether offenders of such heritage should serve house arrest or jail, the court wrote that “a more nuanced approach” was required. In short, a racial discount was to be applied.

“The moral culpability of an African Nova Scotian offender has to be assessed in the context of historic factors and systemic racism, as was done in this case,” wrote the trial judge, with whom the majority of the appeal court agreed. “Sentencing judges should take into account the impact that social and economic deprivation, historical disadvantage, diminished and non-existent opportunities and restricted options may have had on the offender’s moral responsibility.”

As an African Nova Scotian, the father had been impacted by “historical deprivation, social and economic deprivation as well as diminished and virtually non-existent opportunities.” In sentencing, these broad factors didn’t have to be linked to his crime to be relevant — they just needed to be present.

Punishment for crimes should be determined not by what one does, but by who one is. That is the principle.

Over the years I have come to the sad conclusion that no society has figured out a just and effective way to punish criminals and reintegrate them into society, and even worse that there may be no good way to do so. On the latter, I hope I am wrong and that there is some as-yet untried way of healing the brokenness of humanity and restoring criminals on a mass scale to society in a way that benefits both the criminals and society.

Human beings should not be disposable, even the least and worst among us.

But we don’t know how to do that, so in practice, the criminal justice system exists to punish wrongdoing and exact a measure of revenge (which is a necessary part of the process because our consciences demand it, for good or ill) for wrongs committed. Let’s be honest about it: criminal justice is almost solely about protecting society and not for the benefit of criminals. If we could do the latter without sacrificing the former I would be all for it, but we don’t know how to.

Aside from these sentencing reforms to the Criminal Code, the practice of assessing an individual Black offender’s experiences of racism and trauma has been supported directly by the feds. Pioneered by Nova Scotia and Ontario, the feds earmarked $6.6 million in 2021 to expand the practice.

The uptake of race-based criminal procedure in Canada has been a concerning trend, and this is only the latest example. Race-based sentencing discounts began being used for Indigenous people in 1999 after a decision called R v. Gladue; this practice was expanded for Black offenders in Nova Scotia in 2019 and in Ontario in 2021. The Supreme Court of Canada has also said that Charter rights are also to be interpreted with a racial lens. In Ontario last year, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the race of an accused person should be factored into the decision to allow a jury to know their criminal record.

And history is clear: different justice systems for different classes of people are evil. Justice that is not blind is not justice at all, in any way, shape, or form. And a criminal justice system that openly benefits or discriminates between races is a recipe for disaster.

The reasoning itself is insane. The very same claims–that “African Nova Scotians” are a different class of people with different propensities to commit crimes could lead one to the opposite conclusions than those of the court. You could easily conclude that in order to protect society the punishments should be harsher to more forcefully deter actions by members of a group more likely to commit crimes. It’s hard to see how that is a less rational response than leniency. After all, the criminal justice system exists primarily to protect society.

Any claims that we are reforming criminals in order to make them better people or more productive citizens are, by now, a joke. Clearly, that doesn’t work.

Race, and for the most part personal history, should simply be kept out of the process entirely unless there is a clear link to capacity for reason. Intellectual disability should count, but skin color should not.

Unfortunately, racial essentialism is alive and well. And if the powers that be keep emphasizing it the odious concept will spread, as it has been on the Left and I fear the Right as well. The Left and Right will unite in the firm belief that Blacks are more likely to commit crimes and simply differ on how to go from there.

That’s an ugly future and leads nowhere good.