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Thread: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

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    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/...ouse_kickbacks

    Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash


    By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writers Michael Rubinkam And Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press Writers –

    WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

    The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

    In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

    "I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

    Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

    No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

    The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.

    Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

    Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

    The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.

    Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County's juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, "I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame." Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.

    Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.

    Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.

    In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.

    One of the contracts — a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million — was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.

    The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.

    Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.

    "Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands," he said. "These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies."

    For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters' constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

    The criminal charges confirmed the advocacy groups' worst suspicions and have called into question all the sentences he pronounced.

    Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to one, when she appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom in 2007 for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal.

    Her mother, Laurene Transue, worked for 16 years in the child services department of another county and said she was certain Hillary would get a slap on the wrist. Instead, Ciavarella sentenced her to three months; she got out after a month, with help from a lawyer.

    "I felt so disgraced for a while, like, what do people think of me now?" said Hillary, now 17 and a high school senior who plans to become an English teacher.

    Laurene Transue said Ciavarella "was playing God. And not only was he doing that, he was getting money for it. He was betraying the trust put in him to do what is best for children."

    Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn't know his friend was going to steal anything.

    Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator.

    "Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed," said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college.

    "I got a raw deal, and yeah, it's not fair," he said, "but now it's 100 times bigger than me."
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  3. #2
    Titanic Struggles Caveat Emperor's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Wow.

    I know it's not probably not the biggest court around, but I can't imagine how judges could get away with this sort of thing. There must have been a LOT of people looking the other way -- on both the DA's side and the defense bar -- for this to go on unreported.

    Definitely a different way of life out there than here. In Hamilton County, due to budget shortfalls, it's almost reached the point where you have to stick a gun in someone's face before you get sent away to a juvi prison.
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    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Quote Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor View Post
    Wow.

    I know it's not probably not the biggest court around, but I can't imagine how judges could get away with this sort of thing. There must have been a LOT of people looking the other way -- on both the DA's side and the defense bar -- for this to go on unreported.

    You think they might have just went along just to make their jobs easier?
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    Titanic Struggles Caveat Emperor's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip R View Post
    You think they might have just went along just to make their jobs easier?
    Maybe -- but when it comes to lawyers, there's always someone willing to rock the boat if it means making a name for themselves or getting ahead.

    I know I wouldn't mind if someone made my dockets easier, but I'd have serious ethical concerns if judges started doing that when I was around.
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    Member Redsfaithful's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Privatization is a pretty evil thing in cases like this, I'm not sure how anyone ever thought it'd be a good idea to tie profit making into incarcerating more and more people.

    Bribing a judge should be looked at no differently than treason, and the punishment oughta be the same.
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    Member JaxRed's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Oh please. What a lot of hooey. Privatizations of prisons is an excellent idea. This is all about Public Officials taking bribes. Just like the Illinois Governor filling the Senate seat.

    And while taking bribes is a felony and should be sentenced to serious jail time, it's not treasonous.
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    Be the ball Roy Tucker's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Sounds like the Louis Sachar book "Holes".
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    Member Redsfaithful's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Quote Originally Posted by JaxRed View Post
    Oh please. What a lot of hooey. Privatizations of prisons is an excellent idea. This is all about Public Officials taking bribes. Just like the Illinois Governor filling the Senate seat.

    And while taking bribes is a felony and should be sentenced to serious jail time, it's not treasonous.
    It's an excellent idea if you want to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which the US does, by far. Unless you just think Americans commit crimes at a far higher rate than the rest of the world, which is just silly.You can't tell me that it's not at least partially because of the money and jobs involved. Sure, there are other reasons, like idiotic mandatory minimum sentencing, but privatization certainly helps, and it absolutely contributed to this case in particular. It's not as if state or federal government run prisons would have been bribing these judges.
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    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

    Quote Originally Posted by Redsfaithful View Post
    It's an excellent idea if you want to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which the US does, by far. Unless you just think Americans commit crimes at a far higher rate than the rest of the world, which is just silly.You can't tell me that it's not at least partially because of the money and jobs involved. Sure, there are other reasons, like idiotic mandatory minimum sentencing, but privatization certainly helps, and it absolutely contributed to this case in particular. It's not as if state or federal government run prisons would have been bribing these judges.

    Easy. We're starting to tread on some ground that we're not supposed to here.
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