Innocence Movement

Great Essays
(1) Explain the process of policy change and policy reform as it pertains to wrongful convictions in the context of innocence movement.
An individual can think of human development as changing and growing actively throughout a course of time. Policies develop over time based on societies wants and needs. Sometimes policies are desired to be stricter and other times they are required to be more lenient. The innocence movement helped to change policies and this brought insight which helped those who were wrongfully convicted. The development of the innocence movement brought insight on policy change and reform because of the popularity of DNA testing. The expansion happened because of the post-DNA rise, which led to research and academic studies
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In 2000, innocence consciousness had the idea that innocent people were convicted in large numbers, this was because of the justice system has more of a problem with exonerating them. There was a need for structural reform to reduce the error of wrongfully convicted innocent people (Zalman & Carranno, 2013).The multiple problems with policy reform are the necessity of organization and representation to get the issues to the government (Zalman & Carranno, 2013). The Innocence Project emerged with resources to advance the innocence policy agenda by including psychologists as well as decision makers to promote the use of post-conviction use of DNA testing (Zalman & Carranno, 2013). Policies need to develop and can in one of two ways either simplistic or more complex. Adding more is possible but not without an agenda. An agenda is a list of items, which is required for the policy to develop; there are two types of lists: systematic, and institutional. Agendas can take multiple shapes and forms can either be new or continuous; can be formed out of events; can be displaced, expanded or based on various activities. The importance of understanding these kinds of agendas’ will explain the issues that are brought by reform and especially how difficult it was to bring change and reform to the innocence movement. Systematic agenda is a policy that comes from decision …show more content…
This could be a judgment that based on the government or programs. Multiple levels that are involved with policy evaluation know if a policy is beneficial or not. The first level is political, which is the distribution of benefits and a system this based on political parties’ opinions. The second tier is organizational, which relies on the cost and advantages. The third level builds on goals and if the program is effective at the problems that it is addressing (Zalman & Carranno, 2013). To conclude, not only does policy change and reform brings about insight as to why the innocence movement is so complicated. It also brings knowledge on how policies are formulated by modifying the policy process and interacting with others this can help further develop policies, along with money then a policy can improve based on the goals of an organized group (Zalman & Carranno, 2013). Policy change and reform help to bring a better understanding of the rise of the innocence movement and how a policy develops over

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