[wizzwizz4]

> Official misconduct contributed to the false convictions of 54% of defendants who were later exonerated. In general, the rate of misconduct is higher in more severe crimes.

> We tried to determine whether official misconduct that contributes to false convictions has become more or less frequent over the past 15 to 20 years. For most types of misconduct, we won’t know for years to come, but we already see strong evidence that a few kinds of misconduct have become less common: violence and other misconduct in interrogations; abusive questioning of children in child sex abuse cases; and fraud in presenting forensic evidence. On the other hand, the number of federal white-collar exonerations with misconduct by prosecutors has been increasing.

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Gove... (2020)

> According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances.

— Stafford Beer (2001)

> It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

— William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England book 4: Of Public Wrongs (1768)

[flanked-evergl]

Morality is not defined as things that come out of William Blackstone mouth.

[wizzwizz4]

That's true. (Commentaries on the Laws of England summarises a tradition older than the United States, but your point still holds.) Maybe falsely imprisoning innocents en-masse is okay, provided that (for example) the false imprisonment ratio is low enough and it could not easily be lowered further.

But it being okay isn't the same as it not happening. I'm not sure why you asserted that it doesn't happen, when it's a well-known problem. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal (2003–2008), though it's rarely that blatant.

[flanked-evergl]

There is no US jurisdiction with a policy of falsely imprisoning innocents en-masse.