THE PROBLEM

  SCD will join the effort to correct wrongful convictions and fix the criminal justice system. Some of the sources for gathering information about the industry landscape are the National Registry of Exonerations, the Innocence Project, and the Equal Justice Institute. They suggest that nationally, an average of 3-6% of convictions is either miscarriages of justice or manifest injustice. An average of 8.7 years is spent sitting in prison by each person for a crime they did not commit. However, our first initiative focuses its attention of Florida where more wrongful convictions occur than any other state in the nation. In drafting the market research, we asked Microsoft Bing about the numbers. We found because currently the statistics focus only on the exonerations that have been corrected, not the people currently suffering in Florida prisons. An example is Florida having only 78 cases of exonerations since 1989. (See needadvislaw.com) Bing agreed that there is a difference between the number of people exonerated and the number of people who are still wrongfully incarcerated. Unfortunately, there is no definitive way to estimate the latter because many wrongful convictions remain undiscovered or unproven. Some studies Bing suggested show the number in Florida prisons could be anywhere between 3,611 to 7,800 people. Another study showed the number could be between 4,710 and 9,420 people currently suffering for a crime they did not commit. The fact that only 78 cases have been corrected since 1989 means this industry is in desperate need of initiative, guidance and support.