Safeguarding the criminal justice system from wrongful convictions through an efficient innocence program policy evaluation proposal

Executive summary

Convicting innocent people is a global concern. The problem has been brought to the fore in the US through DNA tests that have proven the innocence of some of the people already serving jail terms. So far, up to 138 people have been exonerated of the crimes they were accused and convicted of. Of the number, 13 people were on death row. Experts observe that at least 23 people have already been executed after conviction, in the US, despite their innocence. There are persistent efforts that have led to significant progress with regard to detecting and preventing people from being wrongfully convicted. There is a lot of room for improvement in this area though. Apart from the reforms highlighted and discussed in this paper, the public is increasingly becoming aware of the problem. Such awareness has helped to identify cases with potentially innocent people on trial. It has energized the campaigns to institute reforms meant to reduce the miscarriage of justice. The case between O.J Simpson and the people is a good reminder of the issues that are rarely noticed in the process of trial. This paper tries to point out the aspects of the innocence plan that require tweaking, and how such improvement can be done, with the intention of protecting the justice system from handing out wrongful convictions.

This paper will apply the survey method to gauge the perception of officers regarding how effective body cameras are, in making officers relax in the cause of their police operations. Body cameras were introduced recently by the metropolitan police authorities so as to encourage police accountability in the cause of their work. The study will use the quantitative survey approach to establish how much the officers acknowledge the body cameras effectiveness in achieving the aims intended by the policy. The survey will constitute 5 to 10 questions to be answered based on a rating scale of 1 to 5. The officers responses will be collated and analyzed with the descriptive statistical analysis approach. The main intention of the study is that once the proposal has been successfully implemented, the results will demonstrate the effectiveness level of the body cameras as perceived by the police who use them.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 3

1.1. Program review 3

1.2. Significance of the problem 5

1.3. Significance of the evaluation 5

1.4. Motivation of the study 6

1.5. Research question 6

2. Literature review 6

2.1. Introduction 6

2.2. Unfair conviction transformations in the U.S. 6

2.2.1. Legislation and Public Policy 7

2.2.2. The Death Penalty 7

2.3. OJ Simpsons case and its impact on criminal justice 8

3. Methodology 10

3.1. Research design 10

3.2. Study tool and analysis 10

3.3. Ethical issues 10

4. Expected results 10

5. Conclusion 11

6.