press release

Immediate 19 April 2006

Anger at cut in compensation for miscarriage of justice victims

INNOCENT, the Manchester-based organisation of families and friends of people who have been wrongly convicted, is very angry at the Labour government’s plan to cut compensation for people who successfully appeal against a criminal conviction.*

INNOCENT says:

·         Genuine victims of crime should receive generous compensation. Those who suffer from miscarriages of justice are victims too – victims of crime perpetrated by the State.

·         Can you imagine how terrifying it is to be locked up by the State for a serious crime you did not commit?

Miscarriage of justice victims

·         waste their lives in prison

·         lose their jobs

·         lose their homes

·         lose their families

·         Families of miscarriage of justice victims suffer almost as much as those in prison

·         The expected saving of £5 million a year is trivial compared with what the criminal justice system wastes in prosecutions of innocent people like Sion Jenkins, Angela Cannings, Sally Clark, Graham Huckerby, Steven Johnston and many others.

·         Much more money would be saved by ensuring the police and courts did their job properly and did not prosecute or convict innocent people.

Dr Andrew Green of INNOCENT commented:

This mean little proposal by Charles Clarke is not about saving money – the government wastes more than £5 million every day on useless consultants or sending soldiers to be killed in Iraq. This idea implies that miscarriage of justice victims don’t really deserve compensation – that they probably committed the crimes of which they were convicted. Clarke doesn’t want to admit that the criminal justice system often makes mistakes and, by punishing the innocent, lets the guilty go free. What help is that to victims of crime?

Only yesterday, John Kamara, who spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, pledged £100,000 of his own compensation money to help fellow miscarriage of justice victims. That’s the sort of person Clarke wants to deprive of compensation!

See www.innocent.org.uk/cases/johnkamara/index.html

For more information please email INNOCENT