“kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, in which judges took money in exchange for sending thousands of juvenile offenders to for-profit youth jails. In 2011, former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted of accepting bribes for putting juveniles into detention centers operated by the companies PA Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, are said to have received $2.6 million for their efforts.
now the private juvenile detention companies at the heart of the kids-for-cash scandal in Pennsylvania have settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5 million. The state has also passed much-needed reforms aimed at improving its juvenile justice system and ensuring that such abuses aren’t repeated.
Marsha Levick talking:
The two judges are in prison. The latest settlement is a fairly straightforward settlement, $2.5 million that will provide further compensation to the juveniles. I really think that this is an opportunity, obviously, to close another chapter on what happened in Luzerne County.
And I would add, I think, really listening to the story leading up to this about the private for-profit centers elsewhere, it’s really important, I think, for us as a country, I think, for your listeners, to know that while we can talk about what happens in private centers, some of which, frankly, are not-for-profit, the same kinds of abuses can occur in state-run facilities, as well.
I think that the wider implications are for us to continue to shine a spotlight on how we, as a country, treat children who are convicted of crimes. We treat them harshly. We—I think that this notion of whether or not private centers are providing the same services as public centers, we need to ask ourselves: What kind of services do we want to be providing for children?
In Pennsylvania, I think that by exposing what happened with the judges scandal, we’ve also had an opportunity to achieve great reforms. We have really changed statutory policies in Pennsylvania with respect to children’s right to counsel, with their ability to obtain appointed counsel on their own, presuming that they in fact don’t have financial resources to do that. We have eliminated, for the most part, shackling in Pennsylvania courtrooms. We have provided and required that judges give a statement of reasons. So when judges in Pennsylvania commit children to public or private-run centers, they need to have an explanation for why they’re doing that. And I think the kinds of stories that we’re hearing about what might be happening in Florida or California, for example, we don’t have the same kinds of protections. We don’t have the same kind of transparency in place.
There are a couple of defendants whom we are still litigating against. I think that we have achieved remarkable progress. I think that the settlements, I think that the convictions of the two judges and their current incarceration are all putting pieces of the puzzle together. But I think—again, I think as the story leading up to our conversation this morning illustrates, there’s much more to be done across the country. This is a national story. It’s still a national problem. And I think that these conversations, hopefully, are wake-up calls about the kinds of reforms that we need to continue to be thinking about for our kids.
those prisons for kids in Pennsylvania, the ones that were involved with bribing the judges ontinue to operate. And they—the litigation was not about conditions within these facilities. They continue to bribe—to provide services. This was really about—really, primarily, the action of the judges, their behavior in the courtroom, and how they were so willing to remove children from their homes with really very little due process and very little regard for their rights or interests.
– source democracynow.org
Marsha Levick, co-founder and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, based in Philadelphia. The Juvenile Law Center helped expose the corrupt judges and is now involved in the families’ class action suit.