[Peace-discuss] Fwd: U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money

[John W.]

Here's a perfect example of why privatizing penal institutions is such a bad
idea.



   U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money By Jon Hurdle –
Thu Feb 12, 5:36 pm ET
 *PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to
accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in
Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long
sentences.*
**
*Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common
Pleas in Luzerne
County, Pennsylvania, entered plea agreements in federal court in Scranton
admitting that they took payoffs from PA Childcare and a sister company,
Western PA Childcare, between 2003 and 2006.*
**
*"Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true," Ciavarella
wrote in a letter to the court. "My actions have destroyed everything I
worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame."

*
*Conahan, who along with Ciavarella faces up to seven years in prison, did
not make any comment on the case.*
**
*When someone is sent to a detention center, the company running the
facility receives money from the county government to defray the cost of
incarceration. So as more children were sentenced to the detention center,
PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the
government, prosecutors said.*
**
*Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced
to detention centers for minor offenses that would typically have been
classified as misdemeanors, according to the Juvenile Law Center, a
Philadelphia nonprofit group.

*
*One 17-year-old boy was sentenced to three months' detention for being in
the company of another minor caught shoplifting.

*
*Others were given similar sentences for "simple assault" resulting from a
schoolyard scuffle that would normally draw a warning, a spokeswoman for the
Juvenile Law Center said.*
**
*The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S.
courts. But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an
attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor
offenses didn't require one.*
**
*Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of
approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006,
between 1,000 and 2,000 received excessively harsh detention sentences. She
said the center will sue the judges, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare
for financial compensation for their victims.*
**
*"That judges would allow their greed to trump the rights of defendants is
just obscene," Levick said.*
**
*The judges attempted to hide their income from the scheme by creating false
records and routing payments through intermediaries, prosecutors said.*
**
*The Pennsylvania Supreme Court removed Ciavarella and Conahan from their
duties after federal prosecutors filed charges on January 26. The court has
also appointed a judge to review all the cases involved.*
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