Two U.S. Judges guilty of jailing children for money

[rhoenix]

U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention centre 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 centre, 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 centre, 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 centres for minor offences that would typically have been classified as misdemeanours, according to the Juvenile Law Centre, 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 Centre 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 offences didn't require one.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Centre, 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 centre 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.

...Wow. Just wow.

[SirNitram]

See, there's reasons you don't privatize everything. Profit margins based on number of incarcerations? One of them.

[rhoenix]

See, there's reasons you don't privatize everything. Profit margins based on number of incarcerations? One of them.

One would hope that after this, such things will enter under the purview of "common sense," along with "one cannot expect a for-profit health care industry to place patient's health first and foremost."

[The Cleric]

Wow, 7 year max sentence. I'd honestly prefer that we execute them.

[General Havoc]

Hrm...

Yeah... after careful consideration of all the facts involved... shoot these motherfuckers in the head and hang their bodies in a gibbet.

[Hotfoot]

Wow, 7 year max sentence. I'd honestly prefer that we execute them.

I'm in a very agitated state as of the last few days as the result of an incident that is somewhat related to this, but I will restrain myself here out of respect for the board policies.

Kindly leave your extreme knee-jerking to yourself. There's no question the maximum penalty is well below what it should be, but you've gone around the bend.

That's as nice as I'm going to be about it.

Edit: Havoc, that goes for you too.

[General Havoc]

Chill, man, we were expressing the utter disgust we have for these two judges, something I often express in an over the top manner as the mood strikes me. I assume the same is true of Cleric.