American Justice System

The Plea of Innocence offers a fundamental reform of the adversarial system: plausibly innocent people may now plead innocent and require the government to search for exonerating facts; in return, they will be required to waive their right to remain silent, speak to government agents, and participate in a search for truth. While almost all the participants within the system hope that only guilty people will be convicted, the unfortunate reality is that innocent people are convicted and imprisoned at an alarming rate.

In the past 30 years, more than 2,700 innocent American prisoners - their combined jail sentences adding up to almost 25,000 years - have been exonerated and freed. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a small fraction of the number of persons wrongfully convicted each year. As a result, US jails and prisons are packed with men and women who should not be there, but for crooked police, false testimony, shoddy investigators, vindictive judges, bogus expert witnesses or, far too often, the colour of their skin and their economic condition.

When The New Press, the Center for American Progress, and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas, over 300 currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. What We Know collects two dozen of their best suggestions, each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.

In a world filled with an abundance of medical knowledge, comfort-based technology, and global communication-resources wherefore comes this image of perpetual suffering and pain? Why have we not resolved the ache, the needs, and the cries of a broken society? This book offers a pondering on pain and suffering. It reflects the mind of a sojourner, a visitor to this world, a stranger in a strange land, a Christian. It ponders what a man might see if he had vision into the world of spirits and devils, if he had a better understanding of God’s eternal plan for absolute goodness among all ...