Brenda Martin: Whatever Happened To A Sense Of Responsibility?

April 29 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

Brenda Martin is happy; she’s coming back to Canada after her ordeal in a Mexican prison. Of course, after all the frenzied media attention which pushed for her return, Martin is able to be concerned about how her mother might feel about seeing her daughter brought back to her native land in handcuffs. Chances are too that Martin won’t even spend any more time in prison upon her arrival considering time served and all that jazz. Yet the acceleration of Martin’s return and the quick media support for it leaves me wondering about the Canadian perspective on judicial systems and personal responsibility.

Leaving aside the systemic issues of our permanent bureaucracy (of which there are many), much of the coverage of Martin’s case focused on either the conditions of her incarceration or her lack of culpability in the alleged crime. It’s a great example of the wider prevailing view in Canada regarding crime and punishment: personal responsibility for one’s actions is directly correlated to one’s guilt ergo if a person didn’t know any better how can they be guilty and suffer consequences for those actions. Furthermore, our aversion to accepting responsibility for our actions renders us intolerant for the ways in which other countries choose to punish offenders under their jurisdictions: we expect that other countries should treat us with the same light-handed punishment our own government would.

There were few questions about the actions of Brenda Martin which might have led to her arrest in the media campaign that pressured the Canadian government to bump her case ahead of the hundreds of other Canadians sitting in foreign jails. For some reason, the media was quick to put blame almost entirely on the Canadian government alone for the fact that Martin had been for some two years held in a Mexican jail without a hearing. The media portrayal of Martin was one of a completely unaware employee caught up in the criminal affairs of her corrupt boss; yet what employee doesn’t know to at least some degree the character of their employer? Sure, she might not have knowingly committed a crime herself, but at what point does a person need to become responsible for themselves and, as a result, take measures to protect their own interests?

The case of Saul Itzhayek, the Montreal businessman held in India for travelling on an expired visa, is yet another such example. The media has been eager to point out the governmental failings leading to the 10-month incarceration of Itzhayek; yet who is ultimately responsible? Although mistakes are made, how difficult is it to make sure that the visa for the country in which you are travelling is up-to-date? Is this a Canadian bureaucratic shortcoming, or the individual’s? The fact of the matter is that other countries have their own laws and punishments. Undoubtedly these punishments will seem extreme compared to our “correctional” system.  If we choose to travel abroad, however, we must educate ourselves as to the culture, customs and laws of those regions, understanding that the consequences of actions (and mistakes), which we might take freely in Canada, are different in other places. In this sense, it is first up to the individual to undertake developing that understanding - an unfeeling bureaucracy should be one’s last resort.

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