National Registry of Exonerations reports on "25,000 Years Lost to Wrongful Convictions"

I saw this notable new report from the folks at the National Registry of Exonerations titled "25,000 Years Lost to Wrongful Convictions."  here is part of the start of the report:

In 2018, the National Registry of Exonerations reported a grim milestone: Exonerated defendants had collectively served 20,000 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Just three years later, in June 2021, we reached another: Time lost to false convictions exceeded 25,000 years.  The total now stands at 25,004 years, on average more than 8 years and 11 months in prison for each of the 2,795 exonerees in the Registry.  Innocent Black defendants served a majority of that time — a total of 14,525 years lost to unjust imprisonment.

The National Registry of Exonerations reports every known exoneration in the United States since 1989, a total of 2,795 as of June 1, 2021.  Dozens of defendants exonerated since our 2018 report served more than 25 years in prison for crimes they did not commit....  Not all of the exonerees who served many years for crimes they did not commit were convicted of violent crimes like murder or rape. Lawrence Martin spent nearly 19 years in California prisons for possession of a knife with a locking blade....

It is hard to fathom spending decades in prison, knowing all the while that you are innocent.  But even those who served relatively short sentences suffered tremendously.  People often refer to the time we have spent in 2020 and 2021 under COVID-19 restrictions as a “lost year.”  We’ve missed the ability to travel freely, socialize with friends, and see loved ones. For people wrongfully incarcerated, every year is a lost year.  To exonerees who served sentences of a year or two for crimes they did not commit, it must have felt like an eternity.  For those who served decades, the suffering is incomprehensible.

Unfortunately, the 2,795 exonerations we know about only begin to tell the story of wrongful convictions and the toll they take.  Many exonerations remain unknown to us, though we keep looking. The vast majority of false convictions go uncorrected and therefore are never counted.  Our calculation also does not include time lost to the thousands of people cleared in large-scale group exonerations, which arise when groups of defendants are cleared upon the discovery of a common pattern of systemic misconduct by a government official in the investigation and prosecution of their cases.  Finally, our calculations include only time spent in prison after the wrongful conviction and consequently do not capture the significant time lost in custody awaiting trial.  Put simply, while 25,000 years is a staggering number, it is a significant undercount of the true losses these falsely convicted men and women suffered.