How Social Stigma of Exonerated Individuals Influences the Compensations Available

Abstract

This research paper analyzes the role social stigma plays in post-exoneration compensations for wrongfully convicted people. Although at the preliminary stages, researchers are now analyzing the role social stigma has on financial compensations, social assistance programs, and statutory laws as it relates to exonerated individuals. In turn, the influence of stigma is viewed within the context of its effect on the reintegration process for exonerees. Since much of the research on this topic is provided through studies of legal scholars and social psychologists, I used the method of content analysis to discover how the exonerees themselves feel about the role social stigma played in their reintegration. Through the analysis of personal narratives and documentaries, I found similarities between my research and that mentioned in the Literature Review, (i.e. difficulty obtaining housing and employment and lack of social assistance programs,) although the exonerated individuals expressed different reasons for their reintegration difficulty. Exonerees name mental illness as a result of their unjust imprisonment, the lack of social assistance programs, and the strain their convictions caused on their families as the most difficult part of their post-exoneration life. I submit the differences, as to the influence of social stigma on re-integration between the scholarly research and content analysis, is a result of different vantage points between the exonerees who are living through the struggles and the researcher who are on the outside looking in.