Youth are affected by wrongful convictions – and also have unique power to spark change in our criminal justice system. By organizing at your high school, college or university, or in your community, you can raise awareness about wrongful convictions and engage more people in pursuing reforms to prevent injustice.
If your campus or community already has an organization dedicated to preventing wrongful convictions, the tools and ideas in this section can help expand your reach and impact. If you are interested in forming a group, this section can help you get started.
There’s no right or wrong way to start an organization. Every high school, college, university and community is different, and you should gauge the local culture to get a sense of what will attract other students to your organization and how you can make sure the group has a lasting presence on campus or in the community.
Here are
some general tips: Innocence Project.org - Start A Group
The Innocence Project launched a new campaign this week -- "947 Years: In their prime. In prison. Innocent." -- to educate and engage youth in preventing wrongful convictions.
This new campaign focuses on people who were wrongfully imprisoned when they were just kids. As a campaign announcement tells us, "One-third of the people exonerated by DNA testing nationwide were arrested between the ages of 14 and 22. They served a combined total of 947 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. "That's 947 wasted years that these people will never get back.
1 comment:
I attended the last of the schools that taught Latin and debate. One of our debate topics was capital punishment.
After weeks of research, I learned execution had no ethical, no financial, no economic, no deterrent, no religious, no moral reason– and usually no actual 'closure' for families. The only 'reasons' for execution were vengeance– and political.
My path to opposing capital punishment came first through logic, but it could have been ethical or moral. For a nation that takes pride in being religious, it is dismaying to hear so many twisting Christianity to justify execution.
I don't know that my amateurish high school debate style changed any minds back then, but the research changed mine.
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