US judges take kickbacks to sentence youth into private youth detention centers

Justice in America - Judges Sentence Youth To Keep Private Youth Detention Centers Filled - $2.6 million in kickbacks!

As reported by the The NY Times, and the BBC, At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled. More HERE

AAPP: It's instructive to note what Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim said; “In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention. This is not just a NY problem it's a national problem that the afrospear, color of change, NAACP, The Poor People's campaign, The Lawyers Committee on Civil rights, and other groups need to address.

I wonder how many Black Americans, Latinos and Native Americans have been impacted by these judges, sounds like the U.S. Justice Department needs to be involved in this case.