03.20a British Government Decides to Bill the Falsely Convicted for Food Consumed During Their Prison Term. Via Volokh, , who got it from Hit & Run and NoodleFood, the the Sunday Herald (U.K.) tells us:

WHAT do you give someone who's been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty's Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett's fight has been described as "outrageous", "morally repugnant" and the "sickest of sick jokes", but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it's a completely "reasonable course of action" as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison.
3,000 pounds per year is actually a bargain. By this Labor Minister's logic, the innocent man should also have been billed for the expense of the guards and depreciation on the prison walls.

What *should* be done about false convictions? There are two cases to consider:

1. A person who was probably innocent, and thus released. This person should be compensated for his material losses, including an appropriate wage rate for his time, with interest, and a fixed extra amount for his suffering-- perhaps $100 per day of imprisonment.

2. A person who was probably guilty, but was released because his conviction was improper, because he was pardoned, or because evidence was discovered which made it seem he was, while probably guilty,not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This person should not be compensated.

I would have a government agency decide the category into which the person belongs, with a right of appeal to the courts for clear error.

The same reasoning applies to those not convicted but who bear the cost of trials (or pre-trial detention). If the government loses, it should pay compensation. I would except small amounts of detention--- overnight in jail, for example.

[in full at 04.03.20a.htm .      Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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