may have occurred, not just murder and rape cases where DNA is available. Two Icelandic studies based on self-report conducted ten years apart found the rates of false confession to be 12.2% and 24.4% respectively. These figures provide a proxy for miscarriages of justice because "false confessions are highly likely to lead to wrongful convictions". A more recent Scottish study found the rate of self-reported false confessions among a group of inmates in one prison was 33.4%. Another study estimated that up to 10,000 people may be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in the United States each year. According to Professor Boaz Sangero of the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, most wrongful convictions in Israel relate to less serious crimes than major felonies such as rape and murder, as judicial systems are less careful in dealing with those cases. Contributing factors Academics believe that six main factors contribute to miscarriages of justice. These include eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic analysis, false confessions by vulnerable suspects, perjury and lies told by witnesses, misconduct by police, prosecutors or judges and inadequate defence strategies put forward by the defendant's legal team. Unreliability of eyewitness testimony Eyewitness identifications are notoriously unreliable, contributing to 70% of wrongful convictions. Starting in the 1970s, psychologists studying memory formation and retention found that the way police lineups are conducted can alter an eyewitness's memory of the suspect and this often leads to misidentification. Witnesses also have considerable difficulty making accurate identifications with suspects from different ethnic groups such that "the rate of mistaken identification is significantly higher than most people tend to believe". Elizabeth Loftus, a leading researcher in the field, says memory is so unreliable "the end result can be a highly confident witness testifying in a persuasive manner at trial about a detail that is completely false". Forensic mistakes Contamination Wrongful convictions can also occur when items which become evidence at crime scenes become contaminated in the process of packaging, collection and transportation to a secured facility or laboratory. Contamination can be introduced unintentionally by material that was not present when the crime was committed by anyone entering the crime scene after the event - by uninvolved witnesses who may become suspects, and by emergency responders, fire fighters, police officers and crime scene investigators themselves. If proper protocols are not followed, evidence can also be contaminated when it is being analyzed or stored. A