The Zemiological Afterlife of Wrongful Conviction: Spoiled Identity, Repair and Survivorship

Abstract

AbstractBuilding on the recent global interest in ‘innocence projects’, this article critically examines the various harms experienced by the wrongfully convicted after their release from prison. Locating itself within the zemiology literature, it uses the memoirs of a number of wrongfully convicted persons to conduct a narrative victimological critique of social harms that are often unacknowledged in policy and practice around the reintegration of the wrongfully convicted and in media and societal discussion of their experiences. Insights from these memoirs, it is argued, problematise the various forms of repair offered to the wrongly convicted because these often compound rather than alleviate particular post-release social harms. However, the first-hand accounts contained within their memoirs also illustrate how, far from being caught in a state of passive victimhood, the wrongfully convicted often regain agency through activism and telling their story.