Kathleen Folbigg walked free from a prison in New South Wales in 2023 after serving 20 years in jail following a wrongful conviction.
Folbigg’s name was cleared in 2023 and she was released but only after spending two decades behind bars. Recently she was awarded $2 million for the time she spent in prison – or $100,000 for each year she was wrongly imprisoned.
The case is one of several high-profile examples of wrongful convictions in Australia and one that took 20 years to overturn.
There are growing calls on the back of the Folbigg case and others for Australia to reconsider its approach to the chance of wrongful convictions, including a campaign for a criminal cases review commission, which would investigate claims of innocence.
A new book, Innocence Unveiled, written by a number of workers at RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative, has called for a new approach to understanding wrongful convictions in Australia and efforts to prevent them.
The director of the innocence project, Professor Michele Ruyters, said the aim of the book is to change the thinking about wrongful convictions and to place them in an Australian context.
“There are a lot of people who have been genuinely wrongfully convicted, whether they are factually innocent or not, who will never be exonerated,” Ruyters told About Time.
“We’re always looking back at why a wrongful conviction happened, rather than moving the dialogue to working out why this is happening and putting things in place to stop it happening in the future.”
Wrongful convictions should be looked at in terms of risk factors, she said, such as poor funding of defence lawyers and prosecutors, socio-economic and racial disadvantage, and police misconduct.
These factors then intersect and can lead to someone being wrongfully convicted.
“The main idea is that wrongful convictions happen because there are a bunch of socio-economic, psychological and emotional harms and inequalities that intersect and accumulate,” Ruyters said.
“This could be a very tiny mistake, something that happens in the system and then it shifts and changes everything it comes into contact with, and that mistake then accumulates.
“It just keeps building and building and filters into other areas of the criminal justice system. We wanted to give a voice to those risks.”
Kathleen Folbigg walked free from a prison in New South Wales in 2023 after serving 20 years in jail following a wrongful conviction.
Folbigg’s name was cleared in 2023 and she was released but only after spending two decades behind bars. Recently she was awarded $2 million for the time she spent in prison – or $100,000 for each year she was wrongly imprisoned.
The case is one of several high-profile examples of wrongful convictions in Australia and one that took 20 years to overturn.
There are growing calls on the back of the Folbigg case and others for Australia to reconsider its approach to the chance of wrongful convictions, including a campaign for a criminal cases review commission, which would investigate claims of innocence.
A new book, Innocence Unveiled, written by a number of workers at RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative, has called for a new approach to understanding wrongful convictions in Australia and efforts to prevent them.
The director of the innocence project, Professor Michele Ruyters, said the aim of the book is to change the thinking about wrongful convictions and to place them in an Australian context.
“There are a lot of people who have been genuinely wrongfully convicted, whether they are factually innocent or not, who will never be exonerated,” Ruyters told About Time.
“We’re always looking back at why a wrongful conviction happened, rather than moving the dialogue to working out why this is happening and putting things in place to stop it happening in the future.”
Wrongful convictions should be looked at in terms of risk factors, she said, such as poor funding of defence lawyers and prosecutors, socio-economic and racial disadvantage, and police misconduct.
These factors then intersect and can lead to someone being wrongfully convicted.
“The main idea is that wrongful convictions happen because there are a bunch of socio-economic, psychological and emotional harms and inequalities that intersect and accumulate,” Ruyters said.
“This could be a very tiny mistake, something that happens in the system and then it shifts and changes everything it comes into contact with, and that mistake then accumulates.
“It just keeps building and building and filters into other areas of the criminal justice system. We wanted to give a voice to those risks.”
A key issue in Australia is the level of underfunding for legal aid across the country, with Ruyters saying these organisations are stretched so thin they are unable to spend enough time on each case.
“They are all in absolute crisis, and so are the prosecution bodies,” Ruyters said.
“Everything is stacked against a legally-aided accused.”
Racial disadvantage and police misconduct also “permeate everything”, Ruyters said.
There has been a long-running push in Australia for the establishment of a criminal cases review commission, which would investigate claims of innocence and have the power to refer cases back to courts of criminal appeal.
Similar commissions have been established in New Zealand, Canada and England.
New Zealand’s Criminal Cases Review Commission allows anyone convicted of a crime who believes they have suffered a miscarriage of justice to apply for an independent review. The commission is independent of ministers, the courts and the government.
Since it launched in mid-2020, it has received nearly 550 applications and referred four cases back to appeals courts.
The United Kingdom’s Criminal Case Review Commission was launched in 1997. In 2024–25, it received more than 1,500 applications and referred 31 cases back to the courts.
Across Australia, someone convicted of a crime can request one appeal against the conviction. If they fail, they can then attempt to appeal to the High Court.
But these courts do not re-hear a case from scratch, and new evidence can only be reintroduced if it could not have reasonably been presented at the original trial.
In all jurisdictions except for New South Wales and the Northern Territory, you can also ask for a second appeal from the state or territory appeal court, if there is fresh and compelling evidence proving that a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
For Ruyters and the Bridge of Hope team, reforming these appeals processes would be more important than creating a new commission.
“We’re not opposed to the idea of a commission, but it’s not going to help, because it’ll always be tied to our appeal provisions,” she said.
“Unless you break those open and make it easier for people to appeal, there’s no point in having a criminal case body that’ll pump more people through the same system and get the same narrow logjam.”
Ruyters said it’s important for people caught up in the criminal justice system to make sure they understand what is going on and ask questions if they don’t.
“Question everything,” she said. “Don’t hesitate to speak out if you don’t understand.
“This is your life, and they’re your rights. Ask questions of your lawyers and everyone you come into contact with. If there’s something you don’t understand, it’s your right to understand everything you’re presented with. You need to be in charge of your own life.”
A key issue in Australia is the level of underfunding for legal aid across the country, with Ruyters saying these organisations are stretched so thin they are unable to spend enough time on each case.
“They are all in absolute crisis, and so are the prosecution bodies,” Ruyters said.
“Everything is stacked against a legally-aided accused.”
Racial disadvantage and police misconduct also “permeate everything”, Ruyters said.
There has been a long-running push in Australia for the establishment of a criminal cases review commission, which would investigate claims of innocence and have the power to refer cases back to courts of criminal appeal.
Similar commissions have been established in New Zealand, Canada and England.
New Zealand’s Criminal Cases Review Commission allows anyone convicted of a crime who believes they have suffered a miscarriage of justice to apply for an independent review. The commission is independent of ministers, the courts and the government.
Since it launched in mid-2020, it has received nearly 550 applications and referred four cases back to appeals courts.
The United Kingdom’s Criminal Case Review Commission was launched in 1997. In 2024–25, it received more than 1,500 applications and referred 31 cases back to the courts.
Across Australia, someone convicted of a crime can request one appeal against the conviction. If they fail, they can then attempt to appeal to the High Court.
But these courts do not re-hear a case from scratch, and new evidence can only be reintroduced if it could not have reasonably been presented at the original trial.
In all jurisdictions except for New South Wales and the Northern Territory, you can also ask for a second appeal from the state or territory appeal court, if there is fresh and compelling evidence proving that a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
For Ruyters and the Bridge of Hope team, reforming these appeals processes would be more important than creating a new commission.
“We’re not opposed to the idea of a commission, but it’s not going to help, because it’ll always be tied to our appeal provisions,” she said.
“Unless you break those open and make it easier for people to appeal, there’s no point in having a criminal case body that’ll pump more people through the same system and get the same narrow logjam.”
Ruyters said it’s important for people caught up in the criminal justice system to make sure they understand what is going on and ask questions if they don’t.
“Question everything,” she said. “Don’t hesitate to speak out if you don’t understand.
“This is your life, and they’re your rights. Ask questions of your lawyers and everyone you come into contact with. If there’s something you don’t understand, it’s your right to understand everything you’re presented with. You need to be in charge of your own life.”
