Writer's Block: Take Your Chances
It depends on the circumstances as I don't believe you can apply a blanket ideal to this.
I'd like to believe that, yes, everyone does deserve a second chance because for most of us that's what life is about. Getting another shot to do something, to fulfil a dream or fix something we've broken...and as long as we accept the responsibility of getting that second chance and make the necessary changes to our lives to live up to them, it can be a profound and life-affirming experience.
However, saying that, there are those whose first mistake was too caustic, dangerous or soul destroying to allow for a second chance.
For example: Those who prey on children. Those who have destroyed the lives of people who trusted them with their financial futures out of greed (I'm looking at you Mr. Madoff.) Those who have used their government, teaching or religious positions of trust in order to further their own agendas, to take care of themselves when they should have been helping to take care of others or to fulfil their own twisted desires and perversions and all at the expense of those who trusted them to perform their duties responsibly in the first place.
I am not talking about forgiveness here. I am talking about allowing someone to have a second chance which would potentially place them in a similar position in life to where they were before, on the understanding that they will greet that opportunity wiser and more capable of doing the right thing then they were the first time around.
So I think, for those in the example above, you'd have to gauge the worthiness of that second chance on the ability of those to whom they have affected, victimized or profited from to be able to make their own second chances in life. If they can, then perhaps there is enough goodwill to share with those that caused it. If they cannot, then the cause of that damage can hardly be worthy of it themselves can they?
Maybe that's a hard line, but that's what I think.