ABSTRACT
For the person wrongly imprisoned, as for the person rightly so, there are essentially three aspects to his punishment. There is the time he actually spends in prison. He loses his liberty, and he loses his earnings for that time. There are the more indirect and intangible consequences of conviction. He may lose his reputation among his family, his acquaintances, and potential employers. Where someone suffers the experience of being wrongfully imprisoned, this may push him into committing later offences which otherwise he would probably never have been involved with. And if he comes up before the courts again as a result of this, his sentence may be all the heavier because his previous wrongful conviction is taken as constituting a criminal record. The civil courts make even more generous awards against the police or prosecution witnesses on charges of false accusation, without imprisonment being involved at all.
