Let's shout about it

Imagine waking up one morning to a knock on your front door. It's the police and they'd like to talk to you. Pretty soon you're sitting in a cell facing life imprisonment for a crime you know you didn't commit. The horror of knowing your friends and family, anyone you ever loved or met can see you've been convicted of a terrible crime. Your life has been taken away and the people you care about think you're a rapist or a murderer.

It's a nightmare and one that many people could be living right now. Worse, it could happen to any of us, anytime.

Our criminal justice system is fallible, we know that. When the Guilford Four, Birmingham Six and Maguire Seven were released there was such a public outcry that the government created an entirely new organisation - the Criminal Cases Review Commission - to make sure mistakes hadn't been made elsewhere too.

This news item from the CCRC's website tells a great story, a possible miscarriage has been investigated by the CCRC and referred to the court of appeal. Simon Hall will have the opportunity to present new evidence in his defence and a potential terrible miscarriage of justice might be rectified.

What it doesn't tell you is that the evidence that might prove his innocence would not have come to light if it were not for the hard work of the Bristol University Innocence Project. The CCRC could not have done this without them, and more worryingly, would not have.

So the CCRC was meant to be the solution to the problem. It was born out of the anger and fear that the high profile cases created. That anger and fear just isn't around now, miscarriages of justice aren't getting the same attention they once did. If the CCRC isn't up to the task, without the public outcry seen before how can we hope for the change we obviously still need to save innocent people?

When something happens once it's unique, startling and newsworthy. It happens again and we can't believe it, how could it possibly happen again? How could we let it? Then it happens again and again, it's a trend. The anger and amazement fades, it becomes commonplace and accepted.

We've begun to accept that this is just the way it is. The system will get it wrong and sometimes the wrong person will be imprisoned for a crime, sometimes the real criminals escape justice.

What we need is to make this a huge issue again. Raise awareness and stir things up. Let's all get radical.

Students! Remember the days when there were protest marches and riots? When students were revolutionary and it was about more than just getting a degree.

Journalists! What greater moral calling do we have than finding injustice and exposing it to the light of day?

All of us, everyone of us. We need to read about miscarriages of justice, we need to talk about miscarriages of justice. We need to be outraged every time the system gets it wrong. We need to shout about every mistake at the top of our voices, so next time they get it right.

Get angry. Make a big deal of it. It is a big deal.