Innocent prisoner's dilemma

The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt, for example as a prerequisite step leading to parole, punish an innocent person for his integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been many cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes which they did not commit.

It has been demonstrated in Britain that prisoners who freely admit their guilt are more likely to re-offend than prisoners who maintain their innocence, yet parole officers perceive prisoners claiming innocence to be more likely to re-offend. Other research, however, has found no clear link between denial of guilt and recidivism.

United States law professor Daniel Medwed says convicts who go before a parole board maintaining their innocence are caught in a Catch-22 which he calls "the innocent prisoner’s dilemma". A false admission of guilt and remorse by an innocent person at a parole hearing may prevent a later investigation proving their innocence.

Michael Naughton, founder of the Innocence Network UK (INUK) says work carried out by the INUK includes research and public awareness on wrongful convictions, which can effect policy reforms. Most important is the development of a system to assess prisoners maintaining innocence, to distinguish potentially innocent prisoners from the prisoners who claim innocence for other reasons like "ignorance, misunderstanding or disagreement with criminal law; to protect another person or group from criminal conviction; or on 'abuse of process' or technical grounds in the hope of achieving an appeal." The system he says, is being adopted by the prison parole board and prison service, for prisoners serving "indeterminate sentences (where the prisoner has no release date and does not get out until a parole board decides he or she is no longer a risk to the public). Previously, such prisoners were treated as 'deniers' with no account taken of the various reasons for maintaining innocence, nor the fact that some may actually be innocent." Those prisoners are unable to achieve parole unless they undertake offence-behaviour courses that require the admission of guilt as a prerequisite. This was represented in the Porridge episode Pardon Me. However, in recent years, this has diminished in significance; at the time Simon Hall ended his denials to murder in 2012, the Ministry of Justice denied that this would have any impact on his tariff, and his last online posting had concerned being released from prison in spite of his denials.

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