The fact that we have a team of only 4 people doing this work when it should be a national effort with a couple billion in funding is a disgrace. Shout out to the Innocence Project. If you have the money, it's a great place if you want to make a change in our justice system.
It's a non-profit. The board doesn't do work. It's there to make sure you don't go around blowing the money or doing things contrary to the objective. Here it's presumably a way to get some cred and fundraising connections. They're probably net-positive in capital.
I'm setting up a non-profit and I need to find a board of independent directors. That's fine for me, but the thing will initially look like 1 worker, 5 directors. But it's not like I'm paying the 5.
Yeah I've never setup anything, but I assume a board more or less has a minimum size of several people that probably goes up the more complicated the setup is and as they get more involvement from outside groups. Unless they are paid positions, the size of the board really doesn't mean anything.
That would be the case if the organization wasn't mostly about what the Board and Advisory Board does - basically being a think tank/advisory board kind of deal.
And the stuff are just like secretarial services and such.
The Team page for that site has 115 people rather than 4. I'm sure it's a worthy cause and perhaps more people could help but there's no need to exaggerate...
"Kate Judson is a lawyer who often deals with crimes that did not occur. As the executive director of the Wisconsin-based Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences (CIFS), her job is to examine ostensible scientific evidence to see whether it backs up prosecutors' claims.
"Some people who died were classified as victims of homicide when they were really the victim of illness, or accident, or suicide, or medical error—that kind of thing," says Judson. "We had a case of a family that lost their child. The caregiver was accused of attacking her. It was later discovered, based on new medical evidence, that the child had been really ill with a disease she was probably born with."
Evidence can't bring a child back, obviously. But it can get an innocent person out of jail. And it can give a grieving family some peace of mind. To learn that your child "was held and comforted in their last moments, instead of attacked," says Judson, "would be important to know."
When the center was founded four years ago, Judson left her job as a public defender to become its first employee. Now a staff of four works to keep bad science out of the courtroom. "
I concur. The Innocence Project and the CIFS are terrific organization. They are actively and effectively addressing flaws in a system that too often proves unjust to innocent citizens. They deserve all support and funding possible.
Until I was facing justice myself [1], I wrongly believed wrongful convictions were an extreme rarity. I actually discovered that innocent individuals are imprisoned every day, partly due to unreliable pseudo-scientific forensic methods [2]. I'm totally perplexed by society's apparent acceptance (or ignorance) of notable error rates in criminal convictions [3]. Why isn't it a major national cause already?
https://innocenceproject.org/