The Innocence Project Saved Taxpayers Ten Million Dollars This Year
March 4, 2009 – 9:26 amIt’s only March, yet The Innocence Project has already saved American tax payers $10,440,000 this year.
The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
This number was arrived at by taking the average cost of housing one inmate ($45,000) and multiplying it by the amount of people the Innocence Project has proven innocent (232). The housing cost comes from several factors; food, utilities, facilities, health care, recovery and reacclimation programs, and staffing and maintenance of the above.
The ten million dollar figure is not a one time savings, and the savings are compounded. every time a person is exonerated, another $45 thousand is saved, yearly. Even if the Innocence Project stopped operating today, over the next ten years it has already saved America over a hundred million dollars.
Getting a DNA test is a simple procedure which only costs a few thousand dollars. So the question arises, why doesn’t the government adapt this same policy as the Innocence Project? Thankfully, other people are asking this same question. A groundbreaking report released Feb. 18 by the National Academy of Sciences calls for the U.S. federal government to create a National Institute of Forensic Science to strengthen research, support and oversight of forensic science. The safeguards recommended in the report would significantly improve public safety and prevent wrongful convictions.
You can read more about the Innocence Project’s mission and actions here.
Note: Last year, a bunch of conservatives got together and flagged this website as spam on Digg. Because of that, this article cannot be submitted to Digg.