WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU’RE JAILED AND THEN EXONERATED: Damn near nothing, writes Emily Bazelon in The New York Times:

Yet when the wrongfully convicted gain their freedom, they’re usually not entitled to the social services, like help with housing and jobs, that other released convicts receive. (They’re not on probation or eligible for other ex-offender programs.) Just as troubling, they rarely get any money from state governments to make up for the years of lost freedom, livelihood and time with loved ones.

For what they’ve suffered, these victims deserve better. Since the state fractured their lives, it should help them put the pieces back together.

Most of the innocent get little or nothing because only 15 states and the District of Columbia have laws to help the exonerated collect damages. And some of the statutes aid very few people, either because they severely restrict awards — in California the ceiling is $10,000, no matter how long the unwarranted prison sentence — or limit relief to those lucky enough to get a pardon from the governor instead of relief from a judge.

I think that people who have been wrongly jailed deserve some genuine compensation. Ten grand is pathetic. A hundred grand seems modest. But nobody wants to admit mistakes, and compensation would seem like an admission of just how much harm was done.