Greetings!
Re
member the “Kids For Cash” scandal? Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were caught taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from Robert Mericle, builder of two for-profit youth detention centers, to sentence kids to his facilities. These judges weren’t just sending a few borderline cases, either. From Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Law Center…
“From 2003 to 2008, the Luzerne County judicial corruption scandal altered the lives of more than 2500 children and involved more than 6000 cases. Over 50 percent of the children who appeared before Ciavarella lacked legal representation; 60 percent of these children were removed from their homes. Many of them were sent to one or both of the two facilities at the center of the corruption scandal.”
“Shackling compounded the trauma that a corrupt juvenile court inflicted on the children in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Hillary—whose “conviction” for a MySpace parody of a school official started Juvenile Law Center’s 2007 investigation into Luzerne County practices—was shackled and dragged from the courtroom after a two-minute hearing. She had never before been in trouble. She presented no physical threat. She was not a threat to flee. Hillary was not alone—the shackling in Luzerne County is just one of many examples of the daily state-sanctioned maltreatment of children in jurisdictions across the country.”
I thought I’d washed this out of my mind until an article this month brought it back. The article commented on the sentencing of Ciavarella to 28 years in prison (although he was actually sentenced back in 2011), rightly but belatedly wishing him good riddance. It made me think about the other guys involved in the scandal so I did a little research. Conahan, the other judicial insect involved, was sentenced to 17.5 years while Mericle, the waste of skin who bribed them, was sentenced to a year in prison and was released in April. Mericle settled civil suits by the kids involved for $17.75 million, and his company that built the kiddie dungeons stayed operational throughout his short prison stay and is still in operation today. (There’s no mention of its leader’s extracurricular activities on their website.)
This desecration of justice is appalling on so many levels there’s not enough space to even start addressing them, but let me focus on one… NOTHING has changed to prevent this from happening again. Unless one thinks Ciavarela and Conahan were actively soliciting bribes, then this epic crime was initiated by Mericle, the person who was punished least. His company, the motivation for the crime in the first place, was not affected at all. The system that encourages private prisons rather than making prisons a duty of our government did not even feel a tremor. The private prison companies that lobby for this system are stronger than ever. These children’s lives are destroyed, and they weren’t even a speed bump to the corporations whose existence depends on depriving citizens of liberty. At any cost.
It’s feels good to see malignant cancers like Ciavarella and Conahan doing time, but “feeling good” is not the reason we have a justice system. The police and government are necessary, but they are comforting necessities when they protect us and necessary evils when they don’t. Cases like “Kids For Cash” show exactly how dangerous and voracious they can be unless they stay firmly under control of law and the people. But that lesson is useless unless we not only learn it, but take action to change it.
