Since deciding to do his PHD on ‘The Presentation of the British Prison on Television’ 17 years ago, Cardiff University Lecturer Dr Paul Mason has been actively working to combat social inequality and abuses of power within the criminal justice system.
He also runs the Prison Media Monitoring Unit and co-ordinates the School’s Innocence Project, as part of the UK Innocence Network. Paul is a member of the prison abolition group No More Prisons and the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control. He edited [jc2m] Journal for Crime,Conflict and Media Culture 2004-6 and has also taught at KIJAC in Kosovo and is a member of the Addis Research Group in Ethiopia.
Can you briefly explain what the Innocence project actually does.
The innocence project was originally set up in Bristol by Dr Michael Naughton and it deals with wrongful convictions; those people that maintain innocence in prison. It was set up based on the American Innocence Project where students worked with solicitors to get people off death row. This was set up in Britain to do much the same thing, the difference being we deal with cases obviously not on death row and also that aren’t necessarily only to do with forensic evidence because the one in America only deals with forensic evidence. So what we do is we invite students to come along and work on real cases, mostly murders or very serious cases where people are imprisoned for a long time and we look for new evidence on the actual files in relation with a solicitor to get those people out of prison.
So do you go through some form of selection process when dealing with the cases?
Cardiff happens to have the database for the whole of the Innocence Network. So, the Innocence Network is the umbrella term for all the University Innocence Projects and the centre of it is Cardiff and the Law School. Every time a case comes in the prisoner writes to the Innocence Network and then Julie Price in Law gets her students to briefly analyse the case and say what kind of case it is, whether they think there’s a claim, whether it’s a case we can deal with and then those cases that we think we can proceed with get put in the giant filling cabinet. Then any time anybody from an Innocence Project around the country wants a new case, they go to Julie who gives them one of those cases.
So, what’s your response to the people who brand the Innocence Project as a bunch of ‘raving lefties’?
Well, I don’t think criminal justice is about left/right. Criminal justice is about people who have been put in prison for the wrong reasons and I would have thought innocence cuts across any political background.
On the website you emphasise that it’s about educating and not about campaigning, so what’s your stance on this as a representative of the Innocence Network?
I buy into the Innocence Project because of the way it’s funded, which is partly through donations but also through fund-raising and via Universities. Universities are keen to say that it’s about education and it’s about students getting a chance to work on real cases, because most of the people involved in Innocence Projects are Law students. The Cardiff Nexus Innocence project, which is based in JOMEC but has students from other subjects, is an interdisciplinary Innocence project and so we decided to call it Cardiff ‘NEXUS’ to reflect the fact that we are interdisciplinary.
Do you ever have much trouble with the local authorities or the police when trying to go through the cases?
We keep them out of it. We try to not let them know what we are doing because there’s always a danger that the police…we had one case where there were accusations of police corruption and it’s not really in our interests to allow the police to know that we are investigating because files… how shall we say… ‘mysteriously’ disappear. Our main concern is dealing with the prisoner, so we correspond with the prisoner and every time something happens that’s different we write to them with updates. It’s very important to remember that a week in a prisoner’s life is a long time. Whereas we work from week to week and try and meet once a week, a week’s along time for a prisoner to wait for a letter so we try to keep in mind that the prisoner needs to be kept informed and feel that somebody on the outside is doing something for them.
You can see from the Guildford 4 case that it can definitely take a long time, so how do you keep going? Do you keep looking for new avenues to explore?
Well the key thing is that in order to get the case sent to the CCRC (The Criminal Cases Review Commission) you need to have fresh evidence. Now, you can use evidence that’s been used before as long as you use it in a different way or ideally you want to find something new. That’s why Mike Naughton, who set up the project, says Innocence is a good word because it implies innocent eyes, fresh eyes, new eyes and that’s one of the advantages that students have. They’re not coming into it with a world weary ‘I’ve seen this case before’. It’s new to them, they’re excited, they’re determined, they’re driven and they’re enthusiastic and I think we keep going through our desire to see justice done and our desire to see innocent people released from prison.
So when you take a case on, do you just assume they are innocent?
We never assume. You never assume. Anything legal has to be backed up, so we’re very honest with the student and if the student feels that a person… On our oldest case we’ve had somebody say ‘I think this person is guilty’ and we are totally respectful of that opinion and that person. If they say they think that person is guilty, we respect them for saying that and then they must leave the case because everyone working on a case must believe that the person is innocent otherwise there’s no point doing it. It’s a hard, long slog and you’re going to have your metal tested along the way. You have to deep down, honestly believe that that person you are working for is innocent.
So what should students do if they are interested in getting involved?
We welcome students from all departments, all schools, you don’t have to have any legal background or be doing a law degree or anything like that. Most people on the project here in the Nexus Project don’t have any legal experience. The only legal experience comes from me. All they have to do is e-mail me: Masonp@cardiff.ac.uk and then they can either come and talk to me first if they want to know more about it, come along on Monday 5 til 7 JOMEC 1.40.
Paul will be hosting the ‘In Prison My Whole Life’ screening on March 6 and will give a brief talk on the Innocence Project.
For More information: http://www.innocencenetwork.org.uk/
