Wrongful Conviction
Notably, the criminal justice system has, in many cases, been accused of wrongful convictions. And these have been influenced by a variety of issues in the judicial department. Therefore reforms are supposed to be carried out to ensure that this issue is eradicated. Experts claim that for every one wrongly convicted person, there are about 10 to 100 guilty people (Garrett, 2017). And therefore, the most important thing is to ensure that no more innocent individuals are convicted.
Therefore, the most crucial reform to use in the criminal justice right now is the justice department to hire criminal defence lawyers for those who cannot be able to afford them (Risinger & Risinger, 2016). The lawyers will help discover if the suspect is innocent and therefore help them win the case. Consequently, this will help eradicate the issues of vulnerable groups to get convicted wrongly. Most of the people who are wrongfully convicted in most cases lack the financial power to hire lawyers who will defend them in the court. Therefore they are left quite vulnerable and subjected to discrimination during the trial. Currently, most judicial systems and investigating teams are engraved in corruption deals.
Consequently, the suspect will be wrongly convicted as they cannot be able to unearth what is happening (Campbell, Denov, & Lenet, 2017). The guilty easily cover their tracts and lay blame on the innocent suspects. However, if the suspects have lawyers, those lawyers can easily defend them in court by outline what is right and hence convicting the real culprits. Therefore the reform is aimed at not only proving that the suspects are innocent but also getting the real culprits of the crime
However, it is hard to implement the change as it will face a lot of challenges from law enforcement. And this is because they will fear being exposed to their previous corrupt dealings. They will also know that it will be hard for them to engage in such transactions again and hence not gain extra money. They may also feel that the criminals who are being defended are already guilty according to them and thus do not need to be protected at any chance, which may sometimes be true (Garrett, 2017). The reform is also expensive as lawyers are highly paid employees, and sometimes they might be defending guilty criminals. It is hard to convince the government to use taxpayers money on a person the law enforcement unit believes is a criminal (Risinger & Risinger, 2016). Also, there are very few lawyers; therefore, this can prove to be a great challenge as the legal service in most instances is affected by the problem of so many cases.
All in all, the issue of wrongful convictions is very dire and should be eradicated at all means. The government, therefore, must take the reform seriously as it is one of the main ways in which to ensure that they convicted the guilty criminals. It is terrible to subject an individual to such painful experiences, yet they are not guilty.
References
Campbell, K. M., Denov, M., & Lenet, J. (2017). Wrongful Convictions. The Encyclopedia of Corrections, 1-4.
Garrett, B. L. (2017). Actual innocence and wrongful convictions. Academy for Justice, A Report on Scholarship and Criminal Justice Reform (Erik Luna ed., 2017 Forthcoming).
Risinger, D. M., & Risinger, L. C. (2016). The Emerging Role of Innocence Lawyer and the Need for Role-Differentiated Standards of Professional Conduct. In Controversies in Innocence Cases in America (pp. 123-138). Routledge.