The new report from the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University law schools, contains some interesting data about exonerations for alleged child sexual abuse, many of which never occurred.

Women are disproportionately falsely convicted of such crimes. Whereas women and men are exonerated for most crimes in equal proportions, almost two-thirds of female exonerees (62/97) were convicted of crimes that never occurred – mostly child sex abuse. Only 19% of the men were convicted in no-crime cases (224/1184).

Race also plays an idiosyncratic part in child sex abuse convictions. For sex crimes overall — as for most violent crimes — black exonerees far outnumber whites among the falsely convicted: 61 percent of sex-crimes exonerees in 2013 were black.  But when the alleged crime was child sex abuse, 63 percent of those found innocent after serving time in prison were white.

Posted by rbchatelle on Wednesday, April 9th, 2014 @ 8:07AM
Categories: Uncategorized

No comments