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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02122009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02122009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">February 12,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000"><b>
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>By DAVE
LINDORFF<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>When I was a journalism fellow at Columbia
University back in the late 1970s, one of the guest speakers on our
program’s schedule was then SEC Chief of Enforcement (and former CIA
chief counsel and now Federal Judge) Stanley Sporkin. I remember during a
dinner we had with him, Sporkin was asked how SEC investigators were able
to find financial scams. (That was back when the SEC actually did
uncover financial
scams.)
<br><br>
Sporkin said that people in the enforcement division of the agency would
actually sit around and dream up scams. “Then when they figured one out,
they would go out and look for it, and usually they’d find people doing
it,” he
said.
<br><br>
Now, a particularly ugly scam has just been uncovered here in
Pennsylvania. Up in Wilkes-Barre, the old coal-mining part of the state
up in the northeast, two state judges have been charged with sending
hundreds of kids to two private juvenile detention centers in return for
kickbacks from the two centerskickbacks that allegedly ran to over $2
million.
<br><br>
According to an Associated Press report, “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.”
<br><br>
So far, the two companies and their owners have not been charged with any
offense, the report says. Most of the children who were sent into
detention, often for months, had one thing in common: they were poor and
they were not represented by lawyers. (Many were placed in detention even
against the recommendations of their probation
officers.)
<br><br>
The two judges are said to be ready to plead guilty in return for
sentences of not more than seven years, which seems a tad on the light
side to me for two judges who so outrageously abused the justice system
by sending hundreds of kids into detention for minor infractions, like
making a MySpace page to ridicule a school assistant principal, or
allegedly stealing coins from a parked car. I’d lock these guys up for
lifemaybe in a juvenile home where the kids could make them pay. But
aside from this particularly disgusting example of judicial corruption,
I’m struck by how easy it was, apparently, for judges to get lured into a
financial scheme involving providing bodies for a for-profit penal
institution.
<br><br>
The nation, these days, is filled with for-profit prisons, not just for
holding kids, but for holding adults. Motels have been bought up by giant
firms like Corrections Corporation of America and turned into minimum
security prisons. We live in a society where greed knows no
bounds, and where justice is just a word when it comes to poor people
without
resources.
<br><br>
Based upon what Judge Sporkin says the enforcement people at the SEC
discoveredthat if you think of a scam, some criminal minds certainly
have already thought of it and are doing it--I am willing to bet that if
two judges in Pennsylvania could be found to have come up with a scam
like this to earn themselves big bucks by putting kids away in private
institutions for kickbacks, plenty of other judges are doing the same
thing, both with kids and with adult prisoners. So here’s a pitch: If any
defense attorneys, probation officers or other people think that they
know of cases where this is happening, I want to hear about it. Send your
tips and contact info to:<br><br>
ThisCan’tBeHappening, POB 846, Ambler, PA
19002 <br><br>
<b>Dave Lindorff</b> is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at
<a href="http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/">
www.thiscantbehappening.net</a>
<<a href="http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/</a>>
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