Give Reformed Criminals A Second Chance And Let Them Clear Their Records, Malta’s New Justice Minister Proposes
Malta’s new Justice Minister Jonathan Attard has said people should be able to clear their criminal records once they have served their sentence and a certain span of time has passed afterwards.
“People should be given a second chance in life,” Attard said in a new interview with Lovin Malta that will be published in the coming days.
“In the current circumstances, there should be an element of compassion. We must understand individual circumstances and if a person has reformed themselves and embarked on the right path, then why shouldn’t we ensure that they aren’t judged for what they had done in the past?”
When Malta passed a cannabis reform bill last December, it also introduced the concept of expungement – allowing people to clear their criminal records if the crime they had been convicted of had since been decriminalised.
Malta's cannabis reform law introduced the concept of expungement
The minister said that two people have applied for their crimes to be expunged since then.
However, he is now proposing to take it a step further, allowing reformed criminals to expunge their records after a certain amount of time has passed, even if the crime they had committed is still a crime.
“I think we must look in this direction from a human and social aspect,” Attard said. “If someone committed a crime 10-15 years ago and they have since reformed themselves, why should we keep on labelling them for what the had done in the past? It’s not in their interest, nor of society.”
The European Convention on Human Rights gives people the right to erase their convictions from all records after a certain span of time has passed and many European countries allow for this possibility.
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