Consequences Wrongful convictions appear at first to be "rightful" arrests and subsequent convictions, and also include a public statement about a particular crime having occurred, as well as a particular individual or individuals having committed that crime. If the conviction turns out to be a miscarriage of justice, then one or both of these statements is ultimately deemed to be false. In cases where a large-scale audience is unknowingly witness to a miscarriage of justice, the news-consuming public may develop false beliefs about the nature of crime itself. It may also cause the public to falsely believe that certain types of crime exist, or that certain types of people tend to commit these crimes, or that certain crimes are more commonly prevalent than they actually are. Thus, wrongful convictions can ultimately mold a society's popular beliefs about crime. Because our understanding of crime is socially constructed, it has been shaped by many factors other than its actual occurrence. Mass media may also be faulted for distorting the public perception of crime by over-representing certain races and genders as criminals and victims, and for highlighting more sensational and invigorating types of crimes as being more newsworthy. The way a media presents crime-related issues may have an influence not only on a society's fear of crime but also on its beliefs about the causes of criminal behavior and desirability of one or another approach to crime control. Ultimately, this may have a significant impact on critical public beliefs about emerging forms of crime such as cybercrime, global crime, and terrorism. Some wrongfully sanctioned people join organizations like the Innocence Project and Witness to Innocence to publicly share their stories, as a way to counteract these media distortions and to advocate for various types of criminal justice reform. There are unfavorable psychological effects to those who were wrongfully sanctioned, even in the absence of any public knowledge. In an experiment, participants significantly reduced their pro-social behavior after being wrongfully sanctioned. As a consequence there were negative effects for the entire group. The extent of wrongful sanctions varies between societies. When a crime occurs and the wrong person is convicted for it, the actual perpetrator goes free and often goes on to commit additional crimes, including hundreds of cases of violent crime. A 2019 study estimated that "the wrong‐person wrongful convictions that occur annually [in the United States] may lead to more than 41,000