High-profile victims of wrongful imprisonment will be speaking at the launch of a national training event at Bristol University on Friday 2 November. Organised by the Innocence Network UK (INUK), the event is aimed primarily at Law students working on projects about miscarriages of justice.
Victims of injustice speaking at the event include Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six, Mike O’Brien of the Cardiff Newsagent Three and Paul Blackburn, who in total spent over 50 years in prison following their wrongful convictions. Each will be providing their own account of the effects of wrongful imprisonment on their families and the wider community.
The three-day event marks the second training programme run by INUK, the umbrella organisation set up to support the establishment of innocence projects and to help raise public awareness of wrongful convictions.
Among those attending the event will be about 250 staff and students from 20 universities, together with leading experts from the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the Crown Prosecution Service, Avon and Somerset Police, HM Prison Service and criminal barristers, Hollis, Whiteman, Chambers.
They will be joined by representatives from leading campaigning and support groups, including the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, INNOCENT, United Against Injustice, Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers, South Wales Against Wrongful Convictions and the False Allegations Support Organisation.
Dr Michael Naughton, Lecturer in the School of Law and the Department of Sociology at the University, is an expert on miscarriages of justice. He is the founder and chair of INUK. He is also the founder and director of the University of Bristol Innocence Project, the first innocence project in the UK, through which he co-ordinates student reviews and investigations by students of cases of alleged wrongful imprisonment of the innocent, working with local criminal lawyers.
Dr Naughton said: “Learning about wrongful convictions from the victims first hand is a powerful way of inspiring students to want to overturn them. It forces them to confront the often irreparable devastation to whole families that is caused when the criminal justice system gets it wrong.”
The event has been organised by Dr Naughton and Julie Price, Solicitor, INUK Secretary and Co-ordinator of Cardiff Law School Innocence Project.