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Issue with wrongful convictions
Issue with wrongful convictions
Wrongful convictions affecting the criminal justice system
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Lives Wasted
Have you ever experienced that feeling of being punished and accused of something you haven’t even done? It can be one of the worst feelings, and the wrongfully convicted are victims of mistakes that the judicial system makes. 0.5% of felony convictions result in wrongful convictions, which is too many of which wrongful convictions have affected the lives of innocent people. “We call for more integrated approaches for addressing a wide range of often interrelated social, psychological and mental health issues experienced by those who were wrongfully convicted.” As explained in the Experiencing Wrongful and Unlawful Conviction article. No amount of money can replace the time you have missed freely. Over the past several years there have been many cases where people have been unjustified by the law once they were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison as innocent people because of tampering with witnesses, DNA exoneration and mishandling of physical evidence.
In a court room, witnesses are essential to have in a trial in order for the judge to find the accused guilty or not guilty. Sometimes it happens when lawyers or others tamper with these witnesses which lead to false accusations. Witness tampering is harming or otherwise threatening a witness, looking to influence his or her accounts. The crime of witness tampering in federal cases is defined by statute as "tampering with a witness, target, or an informant". This may cause the defendant to be falsely accused and face charges which are unfairly placed by a judge. Some people who are involved in this mischievous activity are lawyers, family members or even the public. Lawyers of the plaintiff force witnesses to give false accusation in order to prove a point whic...
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...f these innocent people’s lives being wasted in jail. Nothing can make up for the time in jail that these people have lost, not only might it cause mental health issues, but also psychological and social problems that might not ever be repairable.
Bibliography
- Wildeman, Jennifer, Michael Costelloe, and Robert Schehr. "Experiencing Wrongful And Unlawful Conviction." Journal Of Offender Rehabilitation 50.7 (2011): 411-432. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2011.
- Alexandrowicz, G. W. Dimensions of Law: Canadian and International Law in the 21st Century. Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications, 2004. Print.
- Bryndis Bjork Asgeirsdottir, et al. "False Confessions And Individual Differences: The Importance Of Victimization Among Youth." Personality & Individual Differences 45.8 (2008): 801-805. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2011.
The aspect of wrongful conviction is established within law to protect the innocent from being abused by the law. Nevertheless, the real issue of concern is the fact of whether wrongful conviction actually helps those who cannot help themselves. With that said, another important underlying factor is whether the criminal justice system has restrictions set up to help those from being innocently convicted and those who have been convicted and later was found to be innocent. By looking at the case of Guy Paul Morin, one will see how the police, courts, and criminal justice system failed in aiding the innocent and bringing justice in society, as well as showing that the system has failed in helping its people, and what must be done to aid those who have been wrongfully convicted.
"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no good law-enforcement reason … Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. . . We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to convict, warehouse and forget"(Holder). Former Attorney General Eric Holder does not dispute that prisons play an important role in the justice system. He believes that along with punishing the inmate’s prisons should provide them with rehabilitation. With the already overpopulated prison system across the US there should be alternative for lesser nonviolent offences.
Blair, Annice. Law in Action: Understanding Canadian Law. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Education Canada, 2003. Print.
McCann, Joseph. “A Conceptual Framework for Identifying Various Types of Confessions.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 441-453. Web. 8 January 2014.
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
were not previously seen, such as hostile or mistrustful attitude towards the world, social withdrawal, feelings of emptiness or hopelessness, a chronic feeling of threat, and estrangement.” Although psychological issues develop in anyone incarcerated, those discussed are particular from the perspective of a victim wrongfully accused.
...t of people who return back to a law breaking mentality after they get released from prison. When you release people instead use these alternatives versus confinement it is less of a waste of expensive resources, taxpayer’s money, as well as time. A medium between control and treatment needs to be met in all of the prisons, or jails. Some men or women need more strict conditions and supervision practices while others may just need more of the services that should be offered such as rehabilitation, and alcohol or drug prevention. Any of these options will not be easy nor diminish this overcrowding issue quickly. It will take time, patience, and cooperation with both the inmates or ex-offenders family, friends, courts as well as law enforcement and jails.
In the article “The Mentally Ill Are Mishandled by the Justice System”, Shannon explains how there are approximately 3000 mentally ill inmates in a prison who are unjustfuly sent there. Many mental illnesses are cause by post traumatic experiences such as being abused as a child or being sexually abused as a child. She also explains how many times judges and officers do not fully understand why mentally ill people do what they do, therefore they misunderstand the person’s actions and send them.
A wrongful conviction is the worst thing that a jury, witness, investigator or judge could be responsible for. The burden and the guilt that will be placed on the shoulders of them, knowing an innocent person had to spend time out of their personal life in prison is unbearable. Nobody is perfect, but everybody should try to be as close as possible to perfect when they are putting a person in prison for a crime they are sure they committed. Compensation will help the innocent victim who had to waste time in prison but nothing will replace the time missed away from families and many families turn on and hate the person thrown in jail because they thought they were indeed guilty, little to their knowledge their innocent. Money can sometimes buy happiness, but it cannot replace lost love and wasted time in prison.
According to the National Institute of Justice truth in sentencing refers to a range of sentencing practices that aim to reduce the uncertainty about the length of time that offenders must serve in prison. Throughout the United States, there has been much legislative activity related to truth in sentencing. “The Truth in Sentencing movement began in 1984 during the extreme overcrowding crises that plagued America during the 1980s and 1990s” (Timothy S. Carr 2008). There were a few discrepancies between the sentence imposed by the judge and the amount of time the offender served in prison. TIS was put in affect to seek the disagreement. States were encourage by the federal government to increase the use of incarceration. If states decided to increase their incarceration they were funded a federal grant to construct, develop, expand, or improve correctional facilities in order to ensure that prison cell space was available for confinement of offenders. There were federal efforts to motivate prisons to increase their incarceration to earn the federally funded grant through two programs called The Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-sentencing (TIS). To receive VOI funding, States needed to give assurance that it will implement policies that guaranteed that violent offender serve majority of their sentences and also guarantee that the time serve was respectively related to the offender’s status and to keep the public safe.
Wormith, J. S., Althouse, R., Simpson, M., Reitzel, L. R., Fagan, T. J., & Morgan, R. D. (2007). The rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders: The current landscape and some future directions for correctional psychology. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34(7), 879-892.
Criminal Law declares what conduct is illegal and proscribes a penalty. Although, we rely on our court system to administer justice, sometimes the innocent are convicted (Risinger). Most people would not be able to imagine a person who is convicted of a crime as innocent, sometimes that is the case. Imagine what a variance that is: an innocent criminal. In an article by Radley Balko he asks the question, “How many more are innocent?” In his article, he questions America’s 250th DNA exoneration and states that it raises questions about how often we send the wrong person to prison. The other issue that follows is the means of appealing the court’s decision and who they can turn to for help.
In the year 1970, the Canadian government founded the Law Reform Commission of Canada to ensure the progression of law making and to make recommendations for legal changes . The Law Reform Commission of Canada is constantly importing and suggesting proposals towards the criminal code of Canada. During the year of 1985, t...
Johnstone, G. and Ness, D. (2007) Handbook of Restorative Justice. USA: Willan Publishing. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-what-are-the-alternatives-to-prison-and-do-they-work-419388.html [Accessed 01 January 2014].