The Cellar - PA judges lock up teens for kickbacks

The Cellar (http://cellar.org/index.php)

- Current Events (http://cellar.org/forumdisplay.php?f=4)

- - PA judges lock up teens for kickbacks (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=19527)

It was filed in federal court, so that would be a yes.

This kind of stuff is all but inevitable as long as the 'facilities' are being run by private firms.

The only thing I find surprising that this is a story from Upstate, rather than Philadelphia.

I guess Philadelphia has more experience in the art of the cover up.

Update: Convictions reversed

Quote:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania's highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

The state Supreme Court ruled that former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth offenders who appeared in his courtroom without lawyers between 2003 and 2008.

''Today's order is not intended to be a quick fix,'' Chief Justice Ronald Castille said in a statement. ''It's going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne's juveniles and their families.''

In one of the most egregious cases of judicial corruption ever seen, federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in privately owned lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

Thats it? They fucked all those kids up and get only 7 years? How bout 7 free shots from each kid and then take all they own a give it to the kids.

"violated the constitutional rights" opens the way for civil suits.

Good - and I hope they are expedient trials too.

Update:
Ciavarella found guilty on 12 of 39 counts.

Guilty of racketeering, money laundering, and failing to disclose income. Not guilty of kickbacks and various bribery charges.

We'll see how the sentencing works out.

Ciavarella gets 28 years. I don't know if he will be eligible for parole. I wonder if anyone has bothered to add up the total number of years he sentenced all those juveniles to, in order to get the $2.8 million in kickbacks from the for-profit prisons?

I hope he gets buttfucked in the mouth daily for all of eternity.
Thanks for the followup.

What a horrible thing to do to children who have done nothing more than play a prank. Even if they get their records cleared, the experience will leave them scarred for life. :(

There is a notorious suicide of one of these kids. He should have gotten life imprisonment.

Quote:

"Those three words made me the personification of evil. They made me the devil. They made me the anti-Christ. They made me toxic," Ciavarella told U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik.

Well....yeah.

..and you deserved it. I certainly hope that he felt what all of those defendants who stood before him felt when many of them were railroaded. If he ends up going to a private prison, they should give a single share of stock in the company to each of his victims.

Quote:

Originally Posted by classicman (Post 749645)

I hope he gets buttfucked in the mouth daily for all of eternity.
.

On general principles, I really dislike the concept of prison rape as some kind of sanctioned addition to punishment. I believe that the impulse diminishes us as individuals and a society and might in some way lead to an institutional reluctance to treat the practice as seriously as it deserves.

That being said, I am at war with the impulse to see him further pay for his abuse of power. One part of me says that justice and the law were successful and that this is sufficient, and the other part does want him to become the 'prom queen' of his cell block. This is not one of my best moments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by richlevy (Post 751542)

Ha. Restorative justice in action.