Under British and Australian laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defendants' past criminal record. This protects the person who is being accused of the crime.Some lawyers have suggested that this practice should be change

I strongly agree with this idea. There several arguments in support of the view that, a jury should be aware of defendants past criminal record.

Firstly, we must take into account that, the purpose of the crime is to prevent a delinquent to be nasty again. Therefore, while accusation a jury should be aware of his prior convictions in order to be fair. For example, a person commits robbery three times during 5 years, he is a robber naturally and every time a jury acts in a humanistic way and without any distinction adopts an identical verdict between a recidivist and a person who has committed robbery for the first time in his life which is discrimination between them.

Secondly, as juries have an access to prior convictions a delinquent will be more careful in the next time when he is going to commit a crime, knowing that in case of being detained he is not going to have any excuse in an attempt to prove his innocence. This is why, he will be less likely to commit a crime again and it will diminish the statistics of crimes in a society.

Last but not least, although juries will have an access to prior convictions, I think there has to be a control over judges therefore to eliminate abuse of prior convictions of delinquents. In most countries, the organization so-called Judicial System implements this duty.

In conclusion, from my point of view, juries should have an access to prior convictions. It will both make delinquents more responsible and make the punishments be more appropriate.