Monday 21 February 2011

Dissertation and other big words...

'the criminal justice system is not perfect and factually innocent individuals can, and for a variety of reasons are, wrongly convicted and even imprisoned for crimes they have played no part in' (p13 'Claims of Innocence')

As this three year University course is almost coming to its end - there are a few things still to achieve... One of them being the big frightful dissertation...

At the University of Winchester, the journalist department has joined 'the Innocence Project' which we in our third year can choose to work with as our Final Year Project. This is a project where we are trying to figure out if people accused for murder are really guilty or in fact innocent - that is in prison, charged for something they did not actually commit.

As confidentiality goes I am obviously not allowed to discuss my project into any detail - but overall the Innocence Project has been running since 2004 when it was started by Dr Michael Naughton at the University of Bristol 'to undertake casework, research and communications in the area of wrongful convictions'. With the Crown Court receiving an average of 5000 applications for appeals against convictions given by a magistrates' each year (p12 'Claims of Innocence') there is without doubt a lot that students and other members of the public can do to help either overturning a conviction or find enough evidence to assure the conviction to be 100% correct.

'the criminal justice system is not perfect and it is inevitable that factually innocent people are wrongly convicted and imprisoned' (p3 'Claims of Innocence')

If an appellant fails in his/her appeal against criminal conviction but still keep questioning validity of the conviction they have to turn to the independent body CCRC (the criminal cases review commission). This body was established in 1995 after famous cases such as the convictions of the Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4 were quashed and the need for a commission to review cases of allegedly miscarriages of justice in society. (chapter 7, 'Claims of Innocence')

'put simply, prisons are meant for the guilty, not the innocent' (p15 'Claims of Innocence')

When we were offered to work with this project I immediately knew I wanted to take part of this - but I never thought it would be as interesting working with it as it is. As a journalist, digging around in paper work, reading interviews and witness statements, contacting people and finding ways around to progress with the case is all exciting and hopefully things that will be playing a big part of my life in a future career. Even though there is a lot of 'law talk' - which is quite distant and confusing to me - I have learnt so much in the few months I have been working on the case. Also, as I was assigned case manager, I have also learnt how to be a better organiser and how to keep juggling a lot of balls at the same time while also trying to type up my dissertation out of everything that is going on around me.

After a month or so of energy put into the case, I decided to focus my dissertation on the case as a whole, and the role a journalist can play to help with an alleged miscarriage of justice. There are so many different areas of interest, such as evidence, the role of the media, the role a religion can play (honour killings etc), the law and how it has changed since wrongful convictions became a 'hot topic' in society, authorities (such as police, lawyers etc) and corruption... the list could go on for quite some time - but with a 10,000 word dissertation the focus has to be quite sharp and the area concerned quite limited. Therefore I hope my area is 'small' enough to keep me within the limit and not run over with too many big words...

Monday morning, another week - let's get on with it!