Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash

[Cabbie]

Judges allegedly took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juveniles in lockups

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.
In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.


“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654/

You can read the rest ^^^

Talk about inflated incarcerated rates.

[North-York2007]

I guess the kickbacks were from the institution that these kids were sent to? Guess they were privatized?

[Klein ND]

I was watching an episode of Law & Order SVU early this year which was based upon this subject. This 16 year old girl had taken nude pics of herself and sent it to her boyfriend which then happened to be distributed to all the students at the school. She got charged with distributing child pornography, and sentenced to a juvenile hall (can't remember for how long).

Anyway the Judge seemed to have some grudge against troubled teenagers, sending them to detention centers for crimes that could have been resolved with a fine, community serive hours, or the least: probation. That's when they found out she had a connection with a juvenile center, where she'd get paid per bed being filled.

Moral of the story here is, if it's on Law & Order, it's gotta be real.