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The Politics of Innocence: How Wrongful Convictions Shape Public Opinion
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Wrongful convictions have captured the public’s imagination and transformed the conversation around criminal justice in the United States and abroad. More than three thousand people have been exonerated after being convicted of crimes they did not commit, and an organized advocacy movement has developed around the issue. State governments have responded, altering existing practices and passing new laws to address wrongful convictions. Some commentators have suggested that this innocence movement is largely bipartisan and apolitical, but this perspective masks the dynamics of this movement and the challenges it faces. In this book, the authors explore the political dynamics that have shaped the movement, showing that it is a product of the political landscape. Using an array of original data and statistical analyses, the authors show that ideology has influenced the adoption of state policy reforms related to wrongful convictions and affects public opinion. However, they also demonstrate that certain political communication strategies and ways of framing messages can help bridge the ideological gap and generate support for innocence advocacy. They conclude with a discussion of the future of the innocence movement and its shift to broader, more transformative social advocacy goals and what that might mean for the politics of the movement going forward.
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