There has been a constant debate between Lawyers under British and Australian laws on weather the jury should be given acess to the accused person’s past criminal record. In my opinion, the acess to the criminals record should be given to the jury for the fair judgement of the case they handle.
To begin with, allowing access to the persons previous criminal histroy can revel their behaviour. If the defendant has constantly repeated the same crimes previously it could help the jury to determine weather the current crime has been done by the same person. If the defendant has previous experiences about the laws it helps the persons to ast more convincing and innocent to the public.
Additionally, if someone has been accused several times for fraud and is now facing another fraud charge the previous record may provide useful information when looking over the evidences. It also may help the jury to prevent dangerous criminals to avoid punishments for the crimes that they constantly perform. As aresult the jurt may be able to make more accurate judgements.
However, some argue that revealing previous record may misjudge the accused person and simply judge them on the basis of their previous records. Nevertheless, the judges can ask the lawyers to take the previous records only as a supporting information and not as a solid evidence. For example, people who has commited Tax frauds before could commit the same crime repeatedly.
In conclusion, i believe while there is a risk that past criminal records could misjudge the accused person but it can aslo act as a supporting statement for the case at times then the people are innocent.