The following is an excerpt of a story published in the Illinois Times on on May 4, 2023.
"The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board has made the state the first in the nation to mandate wrongful conviction awareness and avoidance training at all seven police training academies in the state. The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) at University of Illinois Springfield will continue to manage the training, which until now had only been offered in Champaign, and there only as an elective.
IIP has two primary goals, according to Marcus Beach, the group's associate director of wrongful conviction awareness and avoidance: to free innocent people and to promote changes in the law."