Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 10, 2025
07:26
The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory
Published on: January 31, 2017
38.2K
The Relational Costs of Wrongful Convictions
1Department of Criminology, Law, and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22033 USA.
Critical Criminology
|February 13, 2023
Summary
Wrongful convictions create accumulating relational costs for families over time. Familial support often decreases post-conviction and post-release, increasing harm to exonerated men and their relationships.
Area of Science:
- Sociology
- Criminology
- Family Studies
Background:
- Limited scholarship exists on the long-term social impacts of wrongful convictions on family life.
- Wrongful convictions represent a significant trauma with potential cascading effects on familial relationships.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the shifting and accumulating relational costs of wrongful convictions over time.
- To understand the harms incurred by men's familial relationships at three key points: conviction, imprisonment, and post-prison.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative study utilizing in-depth interviews.
- 15 exonerated men were interviewed to capture their experiences and perceptions.
Main Results:
- Relational costs of wrongful convictions accrued and evolved throughout participants' experiences.
- Familial support diminished over time, particularly for those lacking socioeconomic privilege, exacerbating imprisonment harms.
- Post-release hostility and social displacement hindered the rebuilding of available family ties.
Conclusions:
- Familial disruption due to wrongful convictions is a dynamic social process, not solely a result of individual psychological trauma.
- Understanding these evolving relational costs is crucial for supporting exonerated individuals and their families.
Related Concept Videos
01:22Eyewitness Memory
143
Eyewitness memory refers to the recollection of events by someone who has directly witnessed them, often serving as critical evidence in legal settings. This type of memory is commonly used in criminal cases where a witness describes details like a suspect's appearance, clothing, or behavior during a crime. However, despite its perceived reliability, eyewitness memory is prone to significant errors.
One such error is memory distortion, which occurs because human memory does not function...
One such error is memory distortion, which occurs because human memory does not function...
143
01:18False Memories
127
False memories represent a cognitive distortion in which individuals recall events that did not happen, or remember them in an altered form. This phenomenon highlights the brain's constructive nature in processing and recalling memories, emphasizing that memory is not a perfect representation of past events but rather a dynamic reconstruction influenced by various factors.
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...
127
01:17Bonanno's Theory of Grieving
124
Grieving is a complex psychological and emotional process that varies significantly among individuals. George Bonanno's research on bereavement identified four distinct patterns of grieving, offering a nuanced understanding of how people cope with significant loss, such as the death of a spouse, over extended periods. These patterns — resilience, recovery, chronic dysfunction, and delayed grief — highlight the diversity in emotional responses and adaptive mechanisms.
Resilience
Resilience
124
01:14Fundamental Attribution Error
12.9K
According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is...
12.9K
01:12Hindsight Biases
3.5K
Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?
3.5K
01:53Cause and Effect
11.0K
While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
11.0K