This 17-year-long wrongful imprisonment scandal has lessons for all levels of the criminal justice system
No criminal justice system that generates a miscarriage of justice like Andy Malkinson’s can feel at ease with itself. Mr Malkinson was convicted in 2004 of a rape he did not commit. He spent 17 years in prison before being released on licence in 2020. This week, the court of appeal quashed the original conviction on the basis that DNA evidence now made it unsafe. Mr Malkinson is thus a free man. But a large part of his life has been stolen from him. As he himself put it outside the law courts on Wednesday, he was effectively kidnapped by the state.
That is disturbing enough. Now it may get more Kafkaesque still. If Mr Malkinson receives financial compensation for his wrongful conviction and his years inside – for which, on the face of it, he has a strong claim – an assessor will be expected to deduct “saved living expenses” to reimburse the prison service for the cost of his board and lodging. It is jaw-dropping that an unjustly imprisoned person can be charged in this way for their own wrongful imprisonment.
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