Wrongful conviction and imprisonment is a “serious public health issue,” according to a new report from the Center for Health Journalism at USC—especially for innocent Black Americans, who are about seven-and-a-half times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people.
Based on its database—which currently documents more than 3,600 exonerations since 1989—the National Registry of Exonerations found:
7x
Black Americans are 7 times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes
7.5x
Black Americans are 7.5 times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of murder
19x
Black Americans are 19 times more likely than white Americans to be wrongly convicted of a drug crime
Across all crime categories, researchers found that Black people who are wrongly convicted of a crime are likely to spend much longer periods of time in unjust incarceration than white people who were innocent.
More years wrongly lost to incarceration compounds the heavy toll that incarceration takes on mental and physical health for Black people who are wrongly imprisoned.
“Being imprisoned for a crime you did not commit is a serious public health issue,” CHJ Fellow James Causey observes in reporting on the mental and physical health risks of incarceration.
People who enter prison with mental health issues are often denied adequate health care, he wrote, and many are subjected to solitary confinement, poor living conditions, and neglect that can worsen mental health.
Inadequate nutrition, lack of medical care, and infectious diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV also create serious health issues for people in prison.
The constant threat of violence is a significant aspect of how prisons jeopardize public health, Mr. Causey observes. People in prison risk physical harm from being beaten, stabbed, raped, or killed by other incarcerated people as well as prison guards.
In a new study, EJI researchers found that people in Alabama’s prisons die by homicide and suicide at much higher rates than Alabama residents who are not incarcerated.
Mental and physical health conditions caused or exacerbated by years—or decades—wrongly incarcerated continue to imperil exonerees even after they are released.
In 2023, Glynn Simmons was released from prison at age 70 after nearly 50 years wrongly imprisoned in Oklahoma. He is battling stage 4 liver cancer, Mr. Causey reports.
Glenn Ford spent 30 years on Louisiana’s death row after he was wrongly convicted of murder by an all-white jury. He was exonerated and released in 2014 when evidence emerged that another man had confessed to the crime. Sadly, Mr. Ford died from complications due to lung cancer in June 2015. He was 65 years old.
Richard Phillips struggled with financial difficulties when he was exonerated and released from prison in 2018 at age 71. “When he was incarcerated in 1972,” Mr. Causey explains, “a new Ford car cost $4,000, a can of soda was 10 cents, and the average cost of public college was $500 annually.”
While Mr. Phillips eventually received some compensation from the state, many exonerees receive nothing—no financial assistance, no health care, no support—to help them as they grapple with the tremendous strain of re-entering society after years wrongly imprisoned.
Anthony Ray Hinton was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Alabama. When he was exonerated and released after three decades on death row, the State of Alabama offered no apology or support. In a 2015 interview with BBC Radio, he called out the role of racial bias in wrongful convictions.
“When you’re poor and Black in America,” he said, “you stand a greater chance of going to prison for something you didn’t do.”