Students from the University of Bristol’s Innocence Project (UoBIP) will be taking to the streets tomorrow to let the public know about a new pro bono initiative, Innocence Projects’ Day, which aims to educate the public about the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of the innocent.
With almost 5,000 successful appeals against criminal conviction in England and Wales each year, victims of wrongful convictions and their families can suffer psychological and financial damage and forms of social stigma for the rest of their lives.
The initiative aims to raise awareness of the thousands of prisoners maintaining innocence in UK prisons by communicating key messages to highlight the flaws in the criminal justice system.
The students, who will be wearing INUK T-shirts, will be joined by Paul Blackburn, who overturned his conviction in 2005 after spending 25 years in prison for attempted murder, which the appeal court judges said ‘should never have even gone to court’.
Together they will be handing out fact sheets and talking to people to explain some of the flaws which can cause innocent individuals to fall prey to wrongful convictions and imprisonment. The flaws include police misconduct, prosecutors failing to disclose vital evidence, forensic science expert witnesses getting it wrong, false allegations being made and lawyers giving inadequate defence to their clients.
Dr Michael Naughton, Founder and Chair of the Innocence Network UK (INUK) and Director of the University of Bristol Innocence Project, and organiser of the event, said: “Getting students to engage with their local communities to inform the public of the causes of wrongful convictions and the inability of the appeals system to guarantee that the innocent will overturn their wrongful convictions is not only a great way for them to demonstrate what they are learning through their work with the innocence projects. It is also a powerful way of getting the message across to the public that the criminal justice system is deeply flawed and in need of urgent review and reform.”
The Innocence Network UK (INUK) is the umbrella organisation for member innocence projects in universities in the UK. For National Pro Bono Week, 10 to14 November, the INUK has initiated ‘Innocence Projects’ Day’, which will coincide annually with National Pro Bono Week.
Similar to innocence projects in the US, the University of Bristol Innocence Project is the first such project in the UK. It exists to provide free assistance to prisoners who claim to be innocent, rather than those who are victims of a miscarriage of justice, and have exhausted all options available to them. This not only helps prisoners but provides students with ‘real world’ experiences, equipping them with an ethical approach and valuable skills that they can use in their careers.
Since the establishment of the INUK in 2004, there are approximately 500 students in universities in the UK working on over 50 cases of life-sentenced prisoners maintaining innocence.