Imagine Having a Decade of Your Life Erased. It Happened to 161 People Exonerated from Prison in 2021.

A new report shows wrongfully convicted people serving 1,849 years behind bars across the United States before being released last year.

Wrongfully imprisoned persons lost a total of 1,849 years of their lives before being cleared in 2021, according to the newly released annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations.

Last year, 161 people were exonerated for crimes ranging from drug dealing and possession all the way up to murder. People wrongfully convicted of murder made up nearly half of the exonerations, with 75 in all. An average exoneree served 11.5 years in prison before being cleared and freed.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Registry—a product of the law programs at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and the University of California, Irvine’s Newkirk Center for Science and Society. Though the registry is only 10 years old, the exoneration records it uses to calculate total numbers and trends go back to 1989. Since 1989, the Registry has counted more than 3,061 exonerations. Taken together, those prisoners lost nearly 27,000 years of life before being exonerated.- READ MORE