By Olivia Blake

Pen for Justice is a club at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) dedicated to students who want to support wrongfully convicted offenders.

The club works in collaboration with the Canadian non-profit organization Miscarriage of Justice Canada (MJC) and provides support on their wrongful conviction cases. Case workers at Pen for Justice catalogue and summarize information to make it more accessible for lawyers who may want to take on the case—while getting legal experience themselves.

There have been 93 publicly recognized overturned wrongful convictions in Canada’s history, according to the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions.

In December 2024 the Canadian government passed the Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission Act, which established an independent commission would review criminal cases looking for possible wrongful convictions. Since then, multiple non-profit groups have popped up in Canada looking to support wrongfully convicted offenders and help bring their cases to light. 

Fourth-year criminology student Miah Slater founded Pen for Justice in January 2025. It was the first Canadian chapter of international non-profit organization Youth For Innocence which advocates for wrongfully convicted offenders and now has over 50 members. 

Slater said she reached out to Youth For Innocence founder Bijan Taheri and from there the things started to fall into place. Taheri said her passion for criminal law and her want to give undergraduate students opportunities to work in the legal field led to her starting the organization. 

“There’s not many opportunities for criminology students in general,” she said. “I was very tired of working part-time jobs, customer service jobs and I really wanted to do something that was related to criminology because it is my passion.”

Pen for Justice began working on American cases found through Youth for Innocence. Recently they’ve expanded to Canadian cases through a collaboration with MJC, something they had been working towards since their founding. 

MJC finds cases of wrongful convictions through their intake forms. They then give cases to law students who are supported by case workers at Pen for Justice during their process.

Beyond providing support on cases, Pen for Justice works to bring awareness to the issue of wrongful convictions in Canada, said Slater.

“We incarcerate Indigenous people at disproportionate rates. Racialized people, especially Black and Indigenous people, face harsh and unusual punishment in Canada. It’s really important to bring attention to the biggest failure of our criminal justice system,” said Slater. 

Slater’s stats are right. According to Statistics Canada the rate of incarcerated Indigenous adults was 10 times higher than non-Indigenous adults in 2023-24 in six provinces. In the same time period, Black adults were incarcerated at a rate three times higher than white adults in the four provinces that provided this data according to Statistics Canada.

In October, Pen for Justice hosted an event for Wrongful Conviction Day and hosted lawyers, activist groups and exonerees such as Maria Sheperd, Humza Hussain and Eric Anderson. Around 100 students were in attendance including those from schools outside of TMU like the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph, said Jash Pandya, the vice-president of events for Pen for Justice.

“We were actually astonished and surprised how good it was, considering it was our first year as a club and it was our first event,” said Pandya. 

Pen for Justice also provides a way for students with an interest in the legal field to gain valuable experience they don’t always find in the classroom.

Sayde Lanthier, a third-year criminology student at TMU and case worker for Pen for Justice, said even in their criminology program, her time is spent sitting in lecture halls rather than getting hands-on experience. 

“Not only hearing what [the professors] have to say but then applying it and being able to do something in the field is just really incredible and really rare,” she said.

Pen for Justice claims to be open to all students who have an interest in helping others—not just law students. The team encourages any students who have a passion for the work they do and who are willing to put in the work to join the organization, said Slater.

“It’s been such a life changing experience for me,” said Slater. “I’ve made friends that I will be friends with for the rest of my life, and I have met people that I have so much respect for and who have genuinely made me a very good person.”