NCJ Number
228240
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 48 Issue: 4 Dated: September 2009 Pages: 357-372
Date Published
September 2009
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article reviews a new course for prison and probation staff, devised by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), which allows for the possibility that some prisoners maintaining their innocence may be innocent.
Abstract
The new Managing Indeterminate Sentences and Risk (MISaR) training course is novel in that it instructs prison and probation staff to provide prisoners maintaining innocence with information about the appeals system and how they might challenge their convictions in the courts. However, under closer analysis, the rationale and operations of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) system of risk assessment, developed by NOMS, for prisoners maintaining innocence remains trapped in a bubble which is deterring assistance to prisoners who may be innocent. NOMS fails to fully comprehend the importance of placing innocence at the center of penal policy, not only in the interests of the innocent victims of wrongful imprisonment, but in terms of the reality that when the innocent are wrongly convicted and imprisoned the public remains at risk from the guilty offenders. This article begins with an overview of the Parole Board's stance on the issue of prisoners maintaining innocence and how it straddles between two conflicting requirements of having to assume that all prisoners are guilty and not discriminating against those maintaining innocence. Secondly, it considers the new course for prison and probation staff who work with indeterminate sentenced prisoners (ISPs) devised by NOMS, the MISaR. Notes and references