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Under British and Australian laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defendant's past criminal 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 and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

In today's world, access to criminal history of the accused is a highly debated topic. Although there is a clear rational behind this, I would argue that having a view on defandant's background would help the jury to take a more informed decision. Let us understand why is this the case. There are countless examples wherein a person wrongly accused of a crime has been sentenced, while some of the more serious offender can't wait to commit a crime once they are released from a prison. Having a same ground level assessment policy for both of them wouldn't be considered a fair trial in my opinion. Criminal record can help the jury to expedite the decision-making process thus saving precious time which can be used to process piles of existing pending cases. People in favour of this anonymity policy would like to argue that this policy ensures fair trail by making sure that decision-making process is not influenced by past mistakes thus, giving a person chance to improve in life. While this may be true in an utopian world, many statistics prove that 86% of the serious offender are back in prison just after 2 years of being released. In my experience, I have observed multiple petty theft like pickpocketing, pirated material distributer, etc. would repeat their acts even after being caught and let go after some days/months. They may have their fair share of difficulties behind this repeat offence but processing such case shouldn't waste the invaluable time of public court hearings. Taking everything into consideration, I would strongly support the case wherein jury has access to past criminal record of the defendant.

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 us understand why is this the case.

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some
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 to process piles of existing pending cases.

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 utopian world, This phrase/word is too simple and can be replaced with:a plethora ofa number ofnumerous
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 statistics prove that 86% of the serious offender are back in prison This phrase/word is too simple and can be replaced with:merely
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.

In my experience, I have observed multiple petty theft like Possible spelling mistake found.pick pocketing
pickpocketing
, pirated material Possible spelling mistake found.distributeddistributedistributordistributes
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, etc. would repeat their acts even after being caught
 and This phrase/word (depending on the context) can be potentially replaced with :authorize
let
 go after This phrase/word is too simple and can be replaced with:a number of
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This phrase/word is too simple and can be replaced with:on the contrary
but
 processing such case shouldn't waste the invaluable time of public court hearings. Taking everything into consideration, I would strongly
 support the case wherein jury has access to past criminal record of the defendant. 