Criminologizing wrongful convictions

This article considers the apparent lack of serious engagement with issues pertaining to wrongful convictions by criminology at present. It seeks to address this by criminologizing wrongful convictions in two senses: firstly, by highlighting a variety of forms of intentional law or rule breaking by police officers and prosecutors in the causation of wrongful convictions that in other circumstances would likely be treated as crime and dealt with as such; and, secondly, to reveal the extent to which such powerful criminal justice system agents can cause profound and wide-ranging forms of harm to victims of wrongful convictions, their families and society as a whole with almost total impunity. In so doing, the relevance of the study of the intentional forms of crime and deviance committed by criminal justice system agents in the manufacture of wrongful convictions to both arms of the criminological divide is emphasized: mainstream and critical criminology. The overall aim is to show that the study of wrongful convictions can further extend and enrich existing criminological epistemology in vital and important ways and can even contribute to the prevention and possible elimination of those that are caused deliberately.