Books, Big Ideas, Q&As

Most wrongful convictions lurk below the surface, unrecognized and unremedied

The following is an excerpt from Kent Roach's Wrongfully Convicted: Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice, published by Simon & Schuster, and one of this year's five finalists for the Donner Prize for the best book public policy written by a Canadian. The prize will be awarded in Toronto on May 8.

The uncertainty surrounding the full implementation of LaForme/Westmoreland Traore report is one reason why I agreed to write this book. New legislation to establish a new commission has the potential to be the most important law reform with respect to wrongful convictions in a generation, writes Kent Roach.Book cover courtesy of Simon & Schuster, 2023

Feature

BY KENT ROACH

April 24, 2024

In 2019–20, more than 187,000 adults were found guilty or pled guilty in Canadian courts, and just over 136,000 of them were sentenced to jail. If you assume that the Canadian criminal justice system gets the correct result 99.5 per cent of the time—a very high success r...

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