Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth

The Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (the "CWCY"), part of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law's Bluhm Legal Clinic, is a non-profit legal clinic that represents children who have been convicted of crimes they did not commit. Founded by Northwestern Law Professor Steven Drizin and directed by Professor Laura Nirider, it is the first organization in the world to focus exclusively on wrongfully convicted children. Through its intertwined research, scholarship, teaching, and advocacy, the Center has developed expertise in the problem of false confessions, police interrogation practices, and constitutional doctrine governing the interrogation room.

In collaboration with partners across the United States, the CWCY is active in the federal and state appellate, post-conviction, and habeas corpus process. Its faculty and students not only represent individual wrongly convicted youth, but they also submit amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) briefs before courts around the globe, including the United States Supreme Court, which cited the Center as an authority on juvenile false confessions in the 2011 case J.D.B. v. North Carolina. The Center's faculty are particularly active in the public outreach and professional education space, speaking widely about interrogations and confessions before audiences that range from legal stakeholders like judges, attorneys, police, and law professors to the general public at events hosted by institutions of higher education, religious organizations, and corporate sponsors. Its faculty have also been quoted widely in media reports and academic articles addressing wrongful convictions, interrogations, and confessions.

Since its founding by Steven Drizin in 2009, the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth's faculty and students have helped free more than 20 wrongfully convicted youth through the post-conviction and habeas process, many of whom were serving life sentences. Its clients have included Brendan Dassey, whose case rose to international prominence via the Netflix series Making a Murderer, and Damien Echols of the so-called West Memphis Three, whose case rose to prominence via a series of documentary films including HBO's "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" and Sir Peter Jackson's "West of Memphis."