How Many Innocent People are in Prison?

12.12.11

A recent Mother Jones article attempts to answer this question with help from the Innocence Project, the Center on Wrongful Convictions and experts in the field.

Extrapolating from the 281 known DNA exonerations in the US since the late 1980s, a conservative

 

estimate is that 1 percent of the US prison population, approximately 20,000 people, are falsely convicted.

In fact, since the late 1980s there have been as many as 850 exonerations nationwide, according to


University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, a leading researcher in the field. Many of them float under the radar, Gross says, unlike the highly publicized DNA exonerations.

Leave a Reply

Thank you for visiting us. You can learn more about how we consider cases here. Please avoid sharing any personal information in the comments below and join us in making this a hate-speech free and safe space for everyone.

This field is required.
This field is required.
This field is required.

Cowan Cowan April 22, 2021 at 6:30 pm Reply   

Yes how does an individual help…. When the
system is so Pathetically Broken

mini nikol October 6, 2020 at 10:23 am Reply   

This is incredibly ignorant. It is OK to pull somebody in for something they didn’t do and harass them because “the system gave them a chance to fight”… No it is a crime. Kidnapping is a crime. Harassment is a crime. Wrongful imprisonment is a crime. Our legal system is guilty of the crimes it is sending people to jail for. The law has been broke by the people who make it and enforce it in this country of ours. Freedom is dead.

See More

We've helped free more than 250 innocent people from prison. Support our work to strengthen and advance the innocence movement.