Examining Wrongful Convictions Through the Lens of Behavioral Ethics

Abstract

Wrongful convictions have become common features of criminal justice discourse. However, scholarly analysis of why they happen is often limited by a focus on discrete investigative and legal causes, while popular discourse tilts toward a bad-apple lens that often emphasizes intentional misconduct or malpractice on the part of individual actors. In this article, we frame wrongful convictions as broad ethical failures that comprise an array of shortcomings on the part of both individuals and organizations. This framing calls for more holistic analyses and multifaceted theoretical perspectives. Then, to help move the field in this direction, we propose the analytical framework of behavioral ethics, which stems largely from the field of business ethics. We adapt the behavioral ethics framework and present a streamlined model that may be useful for analyzing wrongful convictions, using examples from the scandal at the Drug Laboratory at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute (“Hinton Drug Lab”) to highlight key concepts. We suggest that this approach is useful not only for studying wrongful convictions, but also for examining a variety of other miscarriages of justice throughout the criminal legal system.

Keywords

behavioral ethics miscarriages of justice misconduct organizations criminal justice system wrongful conviction innocence

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