Does Australia have a problem with wrongful convictions? It’s time we got serious about finding out

When discussing wrongful convictions in Australia, the initial inquiry is whether such a problem exists. The second inquiry is how we would know if there is a problem. The truth is, nobody knows because there is no system in place to track and address wrongful convictions. To determine the answer, we must go through a series of steps.

The United States Innocence Project asserts that there are "staggering" numbers of wrongly convicted individuals in American prisons. Since the early 1990s, over 600 people have been exonerated in the US based solely on DNA testing of retained biological evidence. These individuals spent an average of 13.5 years behind bars. Reviewing these exonerations has revealed various failures leading to wrongful convictions, such as false confessions, inaccurate eyewitness evidence, invalid or misleading forensic evidence, and prosecutorial or police misconduct.

It is highly plausible that these failures occur not just in cases with retained biological evidence but throughout the entire system. While we cannot draw conclusions about the scale of the problem in Australia based on the US data due to differences in our criminal justice systems and cultures, we cannot afford to be complacent about the possibility of a significant problem existing in Australia.

If we do not actively investigate, the issue will continue to remain hidden. In the United Kingdom, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was established in 1997 to address this issue. In the 2024/25 financial year, the CCRC examined 1,480 cases and referred 31 to the Court of Appeal. Twenty-seven cases were overturned by the Appeals Court in 2024, with 18 convictions quashed.

This results in an acquittal rate of 66%. Between 1997 and September 2025, the UK CCRC referred 859 cases to the appeal courts, averaging 31 cases per year. Of these, the courts quashed 603 convictions (an acquittal rate of 70%). Extrapolating these numbers proportionally, taking into account Australia's population and prison population, there would have been approximately 300 cases referred to the appeal courts, 210 convictions quashed, and 90 convictions upheld or pending judgment.

Academic Rachel Dioso-Villa's repository of wrongful convictions, compiled by meticulously reviewing court reports and newspapers across the country, found 48 cases between 1997 and 2015, acknowledging it as likely an underestimate. Our assessment aligns with a 2014 estimate that there may have been nearly 300 wrongfully convicted individuals in Australian prisons.

If our extrapolations from the UK CCRC are accurate, there is strong evidence to suggest that, if Australia had a similar commission, about eight or nine people (after exhausting all their appeals) would be identified as having been wrongly convicted each year. At minimum, the evidence indicates that the burden of proof should now shift to authorities to demonstrate that this is not the case.

Based on experiences in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, there is no room for complacency. While the reality is that we do not know how many wrongfully convicted individuals are currently incarcerated, it is highly likely that there is a significant problem in Australia. We must accept the high likelihood that such a problem exists and that there are many wrongfully convicted people in our prisons.

The current system is inadequate in identifying these individuals and taking appropriate action, as it is designed to make it nearly impossible for wrongfully convicted individuals to be recognized. To address this issue, we need to replace the current system with a national criminal cases or miscarriage of justice review commission.