Correcting the problem of wrongful conviction will require both changing the incentives that police and prosecutors face and resurrecting the belief that the function of justice is to find the truth. Procedural and evidentiary reforms would reduce the rate of wrongful conviction, but such reforms alone cannot remedy the inroads that a Benthamite view of law has made on the Blackstonian view.
Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy.
Crime, Criminal Justice, and PrisonsLaw and LibertyPolicing
Other Independent Review articles by Paul Craig Roberts
Winter 2020/21 What Is Supply-Side Economics? Four Decades Later Wikipedia and Academic Economists Still Don’t Know
Fall 2009 Letter to the Editor
Spring 2004 My Time with Karl Marx
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