Illinois Innocence Project raises awareness on Wrongful Conviction Day

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Monday is National Wrongful Conviction Day and the Illinois Innocence Project hosted an initiative at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Interns and student volunteers placed 3,348 flags at the UIS Quad, which represent the number of wrongfully convicted people who have been exonerated since 1989. 514 of those flags specifically represent Illinoisans who have been exonerated in that time.

"The purpose of Wrongful Conviction Day is to highlight all the wrongfully convicted people not only in Illinois, but also in the United States," said Kaylan Chardan, an intake and staff attorney with the Illinois Innocence Project. "It's to honor them and also to honor the project and the mission to free those people who are wrongfully convicted."

The Illinois Innocence Project was founded in 2001 and is based at the UIS Campus. It is the only innocence program at an undergraduate institution nationwide. The program educates everyday people about the prevalence of wrongful convictions as well as the struggles people face even after incarceration.

"You have to get a certificate of innocence to really be fully exonerated and things like getting loans to restart your life are very difficult," said Chardan. "Even cleaning up your credit is difficult, getting health insurance is difficult. There's a lot of issues that I think people don't realize that even if you're released, you have that stigma."

Another task the Illinois Innocence Project has taken on is their Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance Training Program. This year, the State of Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board made it a requirement for all state police academies to provide training on wrongful convictions. Members of the Illinois Innocence Project travel to these facilities with exonerees to teach new law enforcement officers about wrongful conviction.

"Our communities have been crying out for years that they want better policing in all of the communities across the state of Illinois, which is the wrongful conviction capital of the world," said Marcus Beach, the director of the Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance Training Program. "By going into the police academies, we're building a solid foundation because those recruits are going to be representing the criminal legal system in Illinois for the next 20 to 30 years."