Juvenile Abuse

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American Spectator:


When former Luzerne County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted last month on racketeering and bribery charges connected to the convictions of more than 2,500 juvenile offenders, it marked the latest chapter in one of the nation's most-sordid criminal justice scandals.

For seven years, Ciavarella and his partner in crime, former presiding judge Michael Conahan, helped funnel $1.3 million a year in taxpayer dollars to cronies operating two private jails. They often helped fill the pockets of the operators by tossing alleged youth offenders -- many of whom were first-time offenders charged with misdemeanors such as spraying graffiti, writing prank notes, and truancy -- into those jails, often finding the kids guilty in less than two minutes (and essentially denying the kids the right to lawyers to boot). In exchange for Ciavarella and Conahan's beneficence, the jail operators kicked back more than $2.6 million -- including $997,600 just for shutting down Luzerne County's government-run child jail.

Only in 2009, after a decade of complaints often ignored by Ciavarella and Conahan's fellow judges and Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, did federal investigators bring down the entire "Cash for Kids" scheme. Since then, several hundred of the guilty rulings handed down by Ciavarella have been overturned while the cases themselves have been expunged. This, unfortunately, has come far too late for many of the young men and women who now must deal with the scars, physical and otherwise, from Ciavarella's wrongful convictions. One teen caught in Ciavarella's grasp committed suicide less than a year after spending time in one of the juvenile jails.