Name
Beyond Innocence: Expanding the Movement to Address Unjust Punishment and Manifest Injustice
Description

Innocence organizations (IOs) have been leaders in addressing past harms and injustices in the criminal legal system for decades. Our focus on innocent people in prison has opened the way for a societal discussion of who else is getting caught in the racist and unfair practices that result in wrongful convictions and unjust punishment. This panel will discuss how an expansion of IO work into other injustices, like excessive sentences, is a logical and feasible part of the effort to correct miscarriages of justice. Three innocence organizations, Arizona Justice Project, Innocence Project of New Orleans (IPNO) and the Montana Innocence Project will discuss their work in the unjust punishment and manifest injustice area. A client of IPNO's Unjust Punishment Project will discuss how he ended up with a life sentence for a petty offense, how IPNO's advocacy set him free, and the important gap in advocacy that this work fills for people in prison.