Re: MOJO
'What happens to the innocent?'
MOJO is tackling, single handedly, what should have been, and should be, a government responsibility. The state, having been responsible for wrongly accusing and wrongly imprisoning hundreds of innocent individuals in the last century and this, (individuals who are still alive and trying to find a life beyond prison), has never put in place any mechanism for support either within prison, or upon release. Perhaps until 1997, there was some excuse; until then the significant research of the 1990s in particular by Dr Grounds at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology had not been yet undertaken. Since this research has been made public however, it has become a national disgrace that the grim findings have never been taken seriously; those findings demonstrate that many of those individuals that have been wrongly convicted suffer irreversible psychological damage of the kind and extent only usually found in survivors of major physical disaster or trauma. Those who have been held hostage by hostile captors abroad have been provided, by the government, with expert counselling and sanctuary in properly resourced retreats; those who have survived decades of wrongful imprisonment in this country have found themselves on the pavements outside the Court of Appeal with no place to live, no friend to turn to, and no understanding of the internal damage that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps only those who have themselves suffered have the capacity to understand the depth of the suffering and the extent of the need to assist that suffering. The founders of MOJO have that capacity. To understand and recognise the emergency is one thing however, but to have the strength and commitment to try to put in place what the government never has is quite extraordinary.
Some of us who know something of the damage that has been caused (damage that affects not just the person imprisoned, but also their children) recognise that what is proposed by MOJO is wonderful. We also recognise that those who work on MOJO have the determination and integrity to see the project through and make it work. They, and sadly, perhaps only they, can do so. I give them my total support and encourage others in any way I can to do the same.

Gareth Peirce September 2006