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AMERICA HAS MORE prisoners than anywhere else in the world.
Currently there are 2.2 million prisoners in America. That is 1.6 million more than in Russia, 2.1 million more than the UK and 600,000 more than China.
Nearly two-thirds of prisoners who are released from American prisons will re-offend within three years. However, there are some who shouldn’t be there.
For inmates who are in prison in the wrong, there is a non-profit organisation that fights their corner: The Innocence Project.
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing.
To date, they’ve exonerated 300 people, including 18 who had served time on death row.
The average length of time a person who is exonerated has served is 13 years.
Paul Cates of The Innocence Project says that the project is designed to encourage reform in the US criminal justice system.
“Our mission is to use DNA evidence to exonerate people and reform the system to prevent injustice.
“We try to look at the criminal justice system through a scientific lense. We know through the exonerations that there is a flaw in the system.”
Cates says that misidentification is a problem in the system that leads to innocent men and women being in prisons.
“By far the biggest cause of wrongful conviction is misidentification. Scientists have determined more effective and accurate identification methods, but we’re trying to have a standard set on scientific evidence.
“As such, there is no set standard for states to use in terms of what can be used as scientific evidence and what can’t.”
That push for a scientific standard one of the key goals for the Innocence Project.
They say:
For each cause of wrongful conviction, there are straightforward, proven remedies that make the system more accurate: police can change how they administer lineups to reduce errors; forensic science standards and oversight can increase the reliability of evidence; recording interrogations can reduce false confession.In a review of Innocence Project cases that went to DNA testing and were then closed over a five-year period, DNA testing proved innocence in about 43% of cases, confirmed the prosecution theory in about 42% of cases, and was inconclusive or not probative in about 15% of cases.
In more than 40% of all DNA exoneration cases, law enforcement authorities identify the actual perpetrator based on the same DNA test results that overturned the wrongful conviction.
However, given the nature of the criminal justice system, getting an exoneration is not an easy road, says Cates.
“We have 70 people on staff, including seven staff lawyers and we have anywhere from 250 to 300 open cases at any time.
“They are incredibly difficult and we only take on cases where we feel DNA evidence can exonerate someone.”
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“The home of the braaaaaaave, and the land, of the…… Incarcerated”
1% of the American population!
Beggars belief. But their prison system is outsourced to private firms so there is profit in prisons.
Silly comment. There’s the same incentive in the Public sector to prolong useless, bloated and inefficient services. The Private sector doesn’t try or sentence the prisoners. The Private sector is far more efficient.
It’s clear you’ve read nothing about private prisons William – a silly comment. Like most alliances between the public (legal) and private (prison) sectors, it’s one open to serious corruption. It’s not the sole existence of private prisons that’s wrong, it’s the relationship between them and public sector officials and how they lobby to have tougher laws and minimum sentencing. So, yes, you’re correct they don’t sentence prisoners directly, but they play their role in creating the laws that put them there in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-donnelly/private-prisons_b_1097667.html
Your link hadn’t a shred of evidence there was any corruption. Claiming that somehow there are more prisoners because the prisons are private is just conspiracy theory nonsense. Are doctors and private hospitals spreading Cancer? ……………….. Funnily enough – yes says the conspiracy theory nutters.
You’re getting desperate trying to take down my point by suggesting it’s a conspiracy theory. And if you can’t spot the clear potential for corruption in the opening paragraph you’ve obviously dug yourself in very deep.
Only the conservative right seem to have few/no problems with private prisons since they conform to their corporatism bias. Even the libertarian right recognises there are major issues.
But you’re probably a lost cause.
Lobbying of politicians and financial support for their campaigns occurs in all countries. Knowing that doesn’t create a corrupt conspiracy. Your logic is flawed and your argument contains not a shred of evidence of corruption. That makes you a conspiracy theory nutter.
The very idea that elected politicians take a few thousand dollars for their political campaigns and then purposely try and get more people into prison and for longer on the back of that donation is a theory for the deeply deluded and it’s probably more to do with your hatred of the US than anything else.
So any critic of private prisons is a hater of the US? You got your list of go-to aspersions beside you?
“Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the private prison industry.”
=
“conspiracy theory nutter”
Your quote from the link as I’ve already said doesn’t offer a shred of evidence for anything. Industries give politicians campaign donations. So? It’s not alone illegal but regarded as patriotic.
Gov. Jindal presumably was elected by the majority of the people of Louisiana, a poor state I might add, and gets donations from businesses, so what? You can’t extrapolate from that he wants more prisoners in jail to boost the private prison sector because he gets a donation. YOU have to prove a link. I’ve already said it’s absurd that someone getting a €20,000 donation for TV adds etc.. would then try and get longer and more sentences for prisoners because of that.
Your “logic” is standard fare for conspiracy theory nutters.
It’s not alone NOT illegal
Don’t mind William, he doesn’t like evidence even when it hits him right in the face. He’s also proven incapable of connecting very simple dots and using critical thinking. He’s the perfect subject for propaganda experiments.
William – you seem to think that politicians are a separate breed of human immune from the influence of money on their decision making. The idea that people and companies give money to politicians out of a sense of patriotism (a sentiment that doesn’t encourage logical thinking as it is) is absolutely absurd.
Companies explicitly donate political money to influence decisions and policy. That is the point of lobbying. They want favourable politicians in office. That’s not a conspiracy.
Here’s more ‘conspiracy’ literature on top of that from earlier.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/lpr_15.htm
The point is that you don’t view politicians receiving money from vested interests and their decisions being apparently favourable to those vested interests as corruption. Instead, you call it ‘patriotism’. And call me a conspiracy theorist. I obviously won’t convince you but I think most people recognise the potential problem. Hence the regular calls during general elections for more transparency and greater regulation of political donations. But that’s just part of the ‘conspiracy’, eh?
@William, there is a huge difference between illegal/legal and right/wrong.
Also conspiracy theorist is to open minded as terrorist is to freedom fighter. It is a label created to silence. Not asking questions and accepting things as they are enables the truly evil in our society to prosper. Embrace the ability to think for yourself.
Yeah. Like the BP oil well blowout. Only 5,000 gallons per day, they said.
That’s much more efficient than the hundreds of thousands of barrels per day that was actually leaking.
Private sector is very efficient.
Pay the CEO 12,000 times the wage of the average worker—because he does 12,000 times as much work, right?
Funny shite people think about the efficient private sector.
William, you honestly believe that “patriotic” corporations make massive contributions to politicians and expect nothing in return?
That they do it out of “patriotism”?
And you’re calling other people “nutters”?
YOU have to prove the conspiracy. That’s the way logic works, everything else is just BS.
Crossing a busy road while blindfolded is dangerous and puts you at risk of death. I don’t need to prove that do I?
The first paragraph alone is very misleading …’Currently there are 2.2 million prisoners in America. That is 1.6 million more than in Russia, 2.1 million more than the UK and 600,000 more than China’
a) are there any reliable figures for Russia and China?
b) Actual numbers are no real indicator, percentage of population would be …
It reminds me of a line in Escape to Victory where the German Commandant says that Germany doesn’t recognise Poles and Czechs as prisoners of war “they’re in labour camps. Officially they don’t exist”.
Russia and China only too happy to adopt a similar stance – if they don’t call someone a prisoner they aren’t counted as one.
Creative accounting at its finest.
Two morons desperately trying to deny reality due to a lack of braincells.
China executes people for non-murder offences, so they’re not in prison. China harvests organs from executed prisoners. Do you think China and Russia have an Innocence Project? I suspect that neither China or Russia are much concerned about ordinary crime, they’re both very corrupt. Even in Portugal a policeman told a friend, “We’re here to protect the state, not you”. You can’t compare totally different societies with each other and draw simple conclusions. There’s lies, damned lies and statistics.
China and Russia? Or you just a dick?
Yeah. It’s not so bad I beat my wife and put her in the hospital….my cousin KILLED his wife!
William, you’re a sketch.
Let’s get to the point, William. Why are you so opposed to people freeing innocent citizens from prison?
What is the harm in that? You certainly seem to have a chip on your shoulder about the Innocence Project. What, exactly is it that they do that you find so disagreeable. And leave fecking China and Russia out of it, since they’re not relevant.
Go ahead, William. Tell us why innocent people should be forced to serve their sentences.
Why don’t you learn to read seamus? I think the Innocence Project is an excellent idea.
Worked with the Innocence Project last summer in Washington, D.C. It’s an incredible project and virtually every case I worked on was appalling. What struck me most was, when an exoneree was released from prison, some after 10/15 years, how non-bitter they all were. Literally I thought they’d want to kill the people who put them in prison. But unfailingly they were so philosophical and thankful. Much bigger people than I could ever be. A very worthwhile project.
Sorcha that’s fantastic! I am a member over five years! Shame it’s only in the US.
I wish people would realise that not everyone on death row is guilty.
The people that are now free deserve serious amounts of money,although nothing could repay them.
To date 317 people are free because they did not do the crime they were put on death row for. Imagine that happened you.
Nobody knows how many innocent people died.
Blackstones formulation means not one should have!
This is why the death penalty needs to be banned for this reason alone.
GCD Law school has a branch of the innocence project directly affiliated with the us one. When I was studying law my peers worked on Irish cases and did us placement too. You should look into it. I think If u are not a student there you need to be a barrister or solicitor to offer your pro bono services
Ok so the US justice system has a few flaws. What country’s doesn’t? Some of Ireland’s judicial mistakes are embarrassing.
True but then again Ireland happily does not have the death sentence…..
That’s nonsense with no basis in fact.
Barry Scheck is a brilliant lawyer – does a lot of pro bono work. Even appeared for O J Simpson.
Indeed, he exposed how the prosecution were grossly distorting what the forensic evidence actually was. The prosecution repeatedly referred to DNA and blood evidence “matching” Simpson which was totally misleading as some of it would have “matched” 10% of the human race i.e. a Black African Male. Plus he exposed the LAPD as a crowd of cheats and chancers who blatantly fiddled with the evidence.
Barry scheck I think also defended Louise wardward in Boston in 1997 I think.
I firmly believe OJ Simpsons son killed her anyway! He just took the rap.
If people took the time to read about the innocence project maybe they would change their mind.
The problem is that is has become like the military industrial complex. There are so many people employed by the current system and so much money involved that its impossible to change anything for the better.
How come that same excuse can’t be applied to other countries then? There are paid police, lawyers and judges in every country.
But there are not for-profit prisons.
The for profit prison industry provides boilerplate legislation for state government to pass, which they do as it’s a business that brings jobs to their electoral disctricts, madatory sentencing for minor offences and multiple counts. Next thing you know you have millions of prisoners incarcerated in conditions designed only to extract maximum profit from the funding they get from the taxpayer rather than any actual policy goal (like preventing recidivism by allowing them to learn employable skills for example) and you have an insane spiral defended by the delusional ideologically pure like yourself.
Privatization is the big problem of America’s prison system. The prison service is a big business like everything else in that country. Local county’s are given quotas for the number of prisoners incarcerated, so many inmates are sent in on life term for trivial nonviolent offences such as personal narcotics possession.
These private prisons produce anything from military uniforms to electronic components for drones that kill innocent families in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The majority of inmates are also black Slave labour is alive and well in the United States in 2014.
The police, prosecutors and judges are not privatized, they catch and sentence so your point is invalid.
Without being racist, the majority of crminals are black,which has inevitable consequences
3/4 of black people in prison are there for drug offences. Who’s fault is that?
It’s pretty well documented that in instances of cocaine posession, blacks are sentenced to longer terms for the same amount of drugs than their white counterparts. I didn’t make this up:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=128
In answer to your “Who’s fault is that?” It appears to be a result of the venerable “War on Drugs”.
They need to stop the death penalty until they reform their prison system
I worked with a man named Bernard Baron who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His eventual release is due to work by The Innocence Project. One of the most inspirational men I ever had the pleasure of meeting. Google his story, a heartbreaking and inspiring read.
Looks like they play the system to get guilty men free.
No, they simply use DNA evidence – which doesn’t lie.
Eh David, do you just read the title and the take a wild stab at a response???
“Land of the free”
A lot of federal penitentiary’s are located in well to do areas, the prison population counts on the census so the local authorities are allocated resources and funding based on population. Also the county jails make money of the prisoners by having them work, they transfer the prisoners wherever a prison runs short of labour. Only the federal prisons are paid by the taxpayer, the rest are run by private companies.
Have watched the Documentaries – The Innocence Project. They really do fantastic work. Great to see it getting more publicity.
Leave them deal with it themselves. It’s none of our business. Fools worry about yanks.
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