Under British and Australian laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defender’s past record. This protects the person who is being accused of the crime. Some lawyers have suggested that this practice should be changed and that a jury should be given all the past facts before they reach their decision about the case. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer.

Some Legal practitioners are of the opinion that the Australian and British laws that allows

jury

members to look into the past of a criminal needs to be changed. I absolutely agree because when you look at the

money

and time that goes into looking into the background of each criminal it does not make much sense.

Firstly

, it's a waste of time, I remember a

case

of Wanda Wick had against John Oliver in London in the year 1992, that was a rape

case

, it was all over the news because it took a year for the

jury

to reach a verdict because they were waiting on John's past records, in that year John had gone ahead to rape 23 more girl's and even kill 5,

this

could have been avoided if the

jury

had judged the

case

right away

instead

waiting on his records.

Secondly

, a lot of government

money

gets spent while a criminal past record is being tracked, let us not forget that while

this

is going on the

jury

members lose

money

because they are unable to go into their various jobs. Not only is

money

wasted, other resources like paper, which is terrrible for the enviroment is wasted, all of that

money

and resourses could be channelled into so many other cases which in turns saves life and keeps criminals in jail where they belong

Lastly

, If we were all judged by our past we would have no chance to prove ourselves, i believe if the

jury

looks at past of criminals subconciously a bias has been created even in a

case

where

such

a criminal is innocent based on the fact that the individuals past isn't clean the

jury

might make a hasty decision that could have been avoided if no one knew of the criminals past, i believe not checking criminal records can keep innocent individuals out of jail. In conclusion the good that comes from not checking criminal records far outweighs the bad, since we all know times is of the essence when it comes to saving lives, we

also

know that we don't want to live by our past mistakes and we definitely want our tax

money

to go into things that benefit the community.