The Case of the Birmingham Six

In Birmingham in 1974 two pubs were bombed, the police suspected IRA involvement and so targeted the local Irish population. In the end their dragnet charged six men Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker with the bombings. The six men appeared in court bearing bruises and eventually they plead guilty. 

It turned out that the confessions were extracted from them by physical assault, indeed it came out that none of the six men had committed the bombings and were innocent. Eventually in 1991 after being imprisoned since 1975 the six were freed and the case declared a miscarriage of justice. 

There's a part of the above video that got overlooked but I think is really important. The wife of one of the six didn't know her husband had been arrested until the televised news broadcast despite her home being raided and searched by the police. The reason that didn't tip her off is because the police actions surrounding the bombings in 74 weren't a departure from typical police behaviour when suspecting Irish perpetrators. The UK police fully employed profiling in this period, any suspicious event that might possibly be IRA related was met with a program of harassment and investigation of the local Irish community. 

Profiling is often championed on grounds of pragmatism, it may be unfair or even illegal itself but we're assured that it works. Well it didn't work in Birmingham in 1974, six innocent men were beaten and imprisoned sixteen years, and it also didn't work in Guildford where four Irish men were wrongly arrested for another series of IRA pub bombings, and it didn't work when the police arrested an additional seven Irish men for the crime of manufacturing the explosives used. In the end all eleven men were found innocent after lengthy prison terms.