Judge for Yourself: How Many are Innocent?

by L.A. Naylor

Think you could you possibly end up spending twenty years lost in the British prison system serving time for a hideous crime that you never committed? No? Think again.
Judge for Yourself is a book that is long overdue – a well researched lay person’s guide to the British legal system’s appalling number of miscarriages of justice. Even more interestingly, it is an exploration of how such mistakes are allowed to continue, and how, despite an often blatant lack of evidence against them, many people have been – and still are – languishing in jail for crimes they did not commit.
Naylor starts from an intelligent and irrefutable that any system of justice, being human made, is prone to error. That is not, she argues, a problem per se; the problem lies in the fact that the Establishment, in its indifference, arrogance and/or incompetence, refuses to take any serious action to correct these errors and prevent them from happening in the future. Included are the vivid testimonies of six prisoners at different stages of the criminal justice system. James Baldwin once said, ‘If one really wishes to see how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the lawyers, the policemen, the judges or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those who need the protection of the law the most – and listens to their testimony.’ This is precisely what Naylor has done and such startling revelations make essential reading. Nothing will seem quite the same after.
This is an original piece of work that highlights a serious problem and questions the very nature of the democratic processes that govern our lives.
‘An extremely well written polemic that pulls no punches.’ Michael Naughton

‘This book ought to be compulsory reading for those who preside over what is clearly still a corrupt criminal justice system; those who believe they have been wrongfully charged and those who don’t know what the British criminal justice system is capable of doing to them. Guardian, 6th December 2004

214 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 20, 2004

About the author

L.A. Naylor is the author of 'Judge for Yourself: How many are Innocent', a book about British injustice. Her first novel is due to be published in 2019.

Reviews

[Francis Shawcross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I must be interested in crime and the law. This is a factual book about the number of people who are innocent but found guilty and in goal. It is anger making but I found it a bit of a plod perhaps because you don't get under the skin of the characters the way you do in fiction. But worth a look to shake your smugness about the rightness of convictions in the United Kingdom.

[Lauren Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, even now, years later is so relevant, it is scary. I have a law background but can recommend this book wholeheartedly to those who do not have any legal background. This book not only challenges some of our seemingly trusted establishments but also ones own thinking and responsibility when it comes to miscarriages of justice today. It is essential that one analyses themselves after reading this and arrives at the conclusion that in order to challenge situations such as those explored in the book, we must all collectively take responsibility for standing up and saying 'this is wrong and it must change!' A truly excellent read!