Broadening the Community, Strengthening the Movement: An Introduction to the Just Data 2024 Scholarship Issue

2023 Just Data: Advancing the Innocence Movement conference.This annual event, organized by the Innocence Project and partners in the larger Innocence Network, brings together a diverse group of scholars and advocates, including those who have been wrongfully convicted themselves, to share the latest social science, discuss emerging issues, and make connections to inform our collective work and promote new applied research.Social science research, often conducted quietly and behind the scenes, is critical to datadriven litigation and policy work in courthouses and statehouses around the world.It informs social work and public education about wrongful convictions.Rigorous, robust research is an essential tool in the mission to free innocent people, prevent future wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.This year's scholarship builds directly on previous years (e.g., Kostyszyn and colleagues [this issue] citing Berube et al., 2023).Several broad themes emerged in this collection: placebased research, with studies uncovering and exploring wrongful convictions in Spain and across Texas; the ever-present role of race and ethnicity at points throughout the criminal legal systemfrom expert testimonies to exoneration trajectories; the unique power of interdisciplinary research in leveraging data to improve case evaluation and accountability in the system; and the persistent problems in the plea-bargaining process.