No deprivation of liberty is more total than what can be imposed by the criminal justice system. Tragically, America’s system is deeply flawed, producing, in staggering numbers, the ultimate miscarriage of justice: wrongful convictions of the innocent.
Since 1992, the Innocence Project has fought to exonerate the wrongfully convicted and implement reforms designed to reduce the number of wrongful convictions and impose accountability on a system that regularly produces them. Since then, the Innocence Project has freed 232 people who were falsely convicted and collectively spent 3,555 years behind bars for crimes that they did not commit.
In 2021, the Innocence Project was awarded the biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. The Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, named in honor of perhaps the greatest champion of liberty in the 20th century, is presented every other year to an individual or group who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom.
The late Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman agreed in 2001 to lend his name to the prize, which has become the leading international award for acknowledging contributions to the promotion of individual liberty. In a statement at the time he said: “Those of us who were fortunate enough to live and be raised in a reasonably free society tend to underestimate the importance of freedom. We tend to take it for granted. It has made us in the West more complacent, so having a prize emphasizing liberty is extremely important.”
10 сен 2024