Yes / The Bradford Innocence Project provides a university led, community supported initiative that deals with cases of wrongful conviction. The project provides students from a wide variety of academic disciplines the opportunity to research and subsequently run cases under the close supervision of academics and practitioners in the legal field.

This thesis explores how society can and should compensate those who have been wrongfully convicted after they are exonerated and how we can prevent these mistakes from happening to others in the future. It begins by presenting research on the scope of the problem. Then it suggests possible reforms to the U.S. justice system that would minimize the rate of innocent convictions. Lastly, it takes both a philosophical and political look at what just compensation would entail as well as a variety of state compensation laws.

This qualitative multiple-case study sought to provide an in-depth understanding of how children living in broken families-due to the wrongful conviction of parent(s)-developed psychosocial issues. The theoretical frameworks applied to this study were the social learning theory, the social control theory, the role-modeling theory, and the general theory of crime. A purposeful sample of 13 adults who were children at the time of their parents’ wrongful incarceration were drawn for phone and in-person interviews. The data were transcribed and analyzed to code, sort, and organize; to analyze connections in the information, and to compare and contrast cases. The multiple-case study data were analyzed using 1st and 2nd cycle coding. Among the 10 themes identified in this study were these 5: family structure and activities, behavioral issues associated with the wrongful conviction of their parents, wrongful conviction effects on education, mental health impacts of a parental wrongful conviction on left-behind children and bullying in school and at home. This implications for positive social change are that the findings raise awareness of the psychosocial issues experienced by children whose parent(s) were wrongfully imprisoned for government officials, community leaders, policymakers, and justice reform advocates who can use them to implement programs to provide psychosocial assistance to all children of incarcerated parents.