A release from prison but not from pain

Lara Bazelon’s Rectify is not a book about victory — it’s about aftermath. It explores what happens when the system finally admits it was wrong, but the damage has already been done. A former Innocence Project director, Bazelon dismantles the myth of the 'happy ending' that comes with exoneration, revealing the deep fractures left in the lives of both the wrongly convicted and the victims who misidentified them.

The unseen sentence

Bazelon reminds us that time served is not where the punishment ends. For Thomas Haynesworth — convicted as a teenager and exonerated decades later — freedom arrives handcuffed to trauma. The so-called 'good news' of innocence offers little solace when reputations, families, and years have been stolen. Exoneration, Bazelon shows, is a release from prison but not from pain.

Restorative justice

Where most legal narratives end with acquittal, Bazelon begins there. She introduces restorative justice — a centuries-old practice of dialogue, accountability, and repair — as a radical form of healing. Victims and exonerees, both casualties of the same error, come together not to relitigate the past, but to understand it. The process is uncomfortable, human, and, in Bazelon’s hands, profoundly hopeful.

The courage to look back

What makes Rectify essential reading for lawyers is its confrontation with institutional ego. Our system prizes finality, not empathy. Yet Bazelon argues that real justice requires humility — the courage to revisit our mistakes, to say we were wrong, and to restore what we can.

For practitioners, it’s a reminder that legal success and moral justice are not synonyms. For everyone else, it’s an invitation to reimagine justice not as retribution, but as repair.

Rectify isn’t an easy read. It’s an honest one. And in a world obsessed with blame, Bazelon offers something far rarer — the architecture of forgiveness.

(And for all the Scream (the movie) fans paying attention: the character 'Cotton' Weary was accused of rape and murder — and later exonerated).

Rebecca Ward MBA is the director of Barristers’ Health (mental health and strategy for the legal profession)