Preventing Violent Crimes by Reducing Wrongful Convictions

• In Event: Individual-focused Approaches to Crime Prevention

Abstract

Wrongful convictions have rarely been conceptualized as a factor contributing to violent crimes in America. In the vast majority of cases in which an innocent person is convicted, the actual offender typically remains free to commit more offenses, including violent crimes. And although failure to detect, apprehend, and convict those who commit crimes occurs far more often than do wrongful convictions, the conviction of an innocent person usually represents two simultaneous errors -- taking away the innocent person’s freedom and allowing the actual perpetrator to remain free. Both Type I and Type II errors endanger public safety and undermine the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. Using existing databases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Innocence Project, and the National Registry of Exonerations, we make some informed estimates concerning the magnitude of wrongful convictions in violent crime cases and the implications of those wrongful convictions for the subsequent victimization of citizens by the actual perpetrators of those crimes, who remained free for varying periods of time. Using even the most conservative estimates, it is likely that reducing wrongful convictions for violent crimes can help prevent thousands of subsequent violent crime victimizations.

Authors

• C. Ronald Huff, University of California, Irvine

• Brian Forst, American University