Presumed Innocent? Social Science of Wrongful Conviction

Catalog description

The criminal justice system is a human creation and some errors are expected. Sometimes guilty parties go free and sometimes innocent people are convicted. In this course, we will employ the perspective of the social scientist to understand why and how wrongful convictions occur. How can social science help to predict, explain, and prevent wrongful convictions? This course is organized into three units. In the first unit, we will examine the large body of social science research that demonstrates disparities in all stages of the criminal justice system. For example, young Black and Latino men are disproportionately arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for violent crimes. This is partly due to these men disproportionately living in environments that foster crime, but social science research shows sometimes it's also partly due to the discretionary decisions of police, prosecutors, and courts. As a result, these demographic groups are most likely to be wrongfully convicted. In the second unit, we'll explore the factors in the justice system that might lead to a wrongful conviction, including false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, poor legal representation, government misconduct, and informants and snitches. Social scientific findings elucidate how each of these factors influence conviction accuracy. Finally, we'll discuss how social science research on the risks and factors that contribute to wrongful convictions can be used to improve policies to reduce the risk of such convictions. Simple reforms such as openness about plea-bargaining, eyewitness identification reform (e.g., sequential lineups, double-blind procedures, etc.), recording of interrogations, and introducing Innocence Commissions in every state can improve our criminal justice system.