COSTLY MISTAKES: For people who spend years behind bars for crimes they did not commit, it is impossible to quantify what they’ve lost. Now an expansive new report puts a price tag on what wrongful convictions have cost taxpayers in one state for the past twenty years. In Illinois, according to a joint study between Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Better Government Association, which tracked exonerations from 1989 to 2010, the total comes to $214 million.
Even more sobering is what this has meant for public safety. “While 85 people were wrongfully incarcerated,” the study found, “the actual perpetrators were on a collective crime spree that included 14 murders, 11 sexual assaults, 10 kidnappings and at least 62 other felonies.” The most common cause of wrongful convictions: “alleged government error and misconduct by police, prosecutors, and forensic officials.”
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Find out more at bettergov.org.
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