Wrongful Conviction Research

The Innocence Project has exonerated over 350 innocent individuals through the use of post-conviction DNA testing and the National Registry of Exonerations has documented more than 2,400 cases of wrongful conviction in the United States alone. Canada (where I live) has ordered a number of different public inquiries into cases of wrongful conviction, to identify what went wrong, and to suggest methods for improvement. Innocence Canada has been involved in the exoneration of more than 20 individuals, but Canada does not have a national database of wrongful conviction cases, and the country does not have an established process (or even a legal obligation) to compensate victims of wrongful conviction. Moreover, the erroneous convictions are not automatically expunged from an exoneree's record in either Canada or the U.S.

New cases of wrongful conviction--and not just old cases that we are currently discovering--continue to occur internationally. There are more wrongly convicted individuals out there than most people realize, and wrongful convictions continue to occur each and every year.




On this page, I have links to some of the research I have conducted relevant to public perceptions of wrongful conviction. Many of my co-authors were students in criminology, sociology, or psychology when the research was conducted and, thus, different papers tend to lean more strongly toward one discipline or another.


To meet journals' copyright requirements, I generally post older drafts of papers with full citation details for the published article.


Articles:
How Attributions of Responsibility Impact Perceptions
Public Perceptions of the Stigmatization of Wrongly Convicted Individuals
All Exonerees Are Not Perceived Equal
Public Perceptions of Wrongful Conviction
Perceptions of Individuals Who Have Been Wrongfully Convicted
Support for Compensation and Apologies
The Impact of an Exoneree's Guest Lecture
Student Attitudes Toward Wrongful Conviction
Causes of Wrongful Conviction: Looking at Student Knowledge
Student Attitudes Toward the Post-Conviction Review Process in Canada

Chapters:
Wrongful Conviction and the Job Market
Wrongly Convicted and Wrongly Incarcerated
Prejudicial Effects of the Prison Experience
Life After Wrongful Conviction



Last updated June 26, 2019