Yet 2016 saw a record number of exonerations-166. each year, one would expect there to be around 40,000 exonerations. With about a million felony convictions in the U.S. Most estimates put the percentage of wrongful convictions at 4%. The advent of DNA forensics also has opened up another definition of wrongfully convicted -“those who were subsequently exonerated by DNA evidence.” When comparing information from studies of wrongful convictions, one must be careful to first determine what the authors mean by wrongful conviction.Īnother consideration is that the vast majority of wrongful convictions are never proven. Others insist that the wrongfully convicted consists only of people who were convicted but are “provably innocent of any crime.” Some would include any conviction that is reversed for reasons other than improperly admitted non-confessional evidence of guilt and for which there was no subsequent conviction. “Wrongful conviction” is also subject to differing interpretations. Given these problems, any statistical study involving race and the criminal justice system must be carefully scrutinized. One way to mitigate this problem is to allow people to self-identify their racial identity, but this inevitably leads to totals in excess of 110% as some people identify with more than one racial and/or ethnic group. Further, this type of designation lumps people of Asian ancestry in with Whites and lists Native Americans as White or Hispanic while ignoring those of mixed racial heritage altogether.
Yet there is no clear definition of what constitutes White or Black, and Hispanic is not a racial group at all, but rather an ethnic group made up of multiple races. Most criminal justice statistics list racial group subdivisions of White, Black, and Hispanic. Further, perhaps due to a lack of a clear definition of race, the breakdown of statistics by racial groups is not standardized. The meaning of “race” is not clearly defined. But even this simple and easily provable statement runs afoul of several difficulties, including a lack of clear definitions for key terms. Studies have shown that racial minorities are overrepresented among the known wrongful convictions. Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on G+ Share with email