Just want to comment that according to the documentary about the Kids for Cash scandal the media made it seem worse then it was.
Their side of the story was that Pennsylvanian's children correction facilities were crap and he did not feel comfortable sending kids there. He organized a group of investors to pay for a new facility. The real estate developer who got the contract to build it paid the judge a "finders fee" for the referral. The Judges didn't report the money. As far as the harsh sentences the judge was doing that for years as an over reaction to the Columbine thing. It's an interesting doc suggest checking it out.
Another reference showed "peak juvenile incarceration" at ~100k kids, and 2000 cases were identified in this scandal alone, so 2% of the peak population were touched directly - and this was the most publicized incidence.
One kid was locked up by these evil people for a minor drug paraphernalia charge. He spiraled after that and ended up committing suicide. The video is the mom confronting the corrupt judge and the river of BS from his lawyer.
Not just "people," that corrupt POS judge sent 4000 juevniles as young as eleven to be abused at a "for profit" detention center while he accepted cash for every child he sent there.
The article above is from 2/29/09. A 2014 article[0] shows their guilty pleas were later rejected due to their behavior, and both given larger sentences.
> Both originally agreed to spend seven years in prison, but then Ciavarella talked exclusively with Newswatch 16.
> "I loved the juvenile court, I loved helping those kids. I would never do anything to hurt a child, that's just not what I do. That's not me. I was always there for those kids. I resent the fact that people think I did something improper. I didn't do anything improper when it came to the care of those kids," said Ciavarella in July of 2009.
> Days after that interview, a federal judge rejected the guilty pleas of Ciavarella and Conahan, saying their behavior didn't really accept guilt.
I find it interesting that this is what you took out of the story. I'm not suggesting it's wrong. My immediate reaction was:
1) These kids are evil.
2) Are they spoiled rich kids?
3) How do I reduce the odds of my kid behaving like that in 10 years.
btw - I'd like to hope the kid who video-taped it knew exactly what he /she was doing. Maybe a silver lining in an otherwise depressing bus ride (that and the 100k).
Lots of kids end up in places like these. Paris Hilton even ended up in a similar place where they abused the kids (as much as legally allowed). I'm not sure if it was as bad as depicted here, but it started off with what was essentially a legal (parent sanctioned) kidnapping by thugs from the school. I think her documentary mentioned she was around the same age when it happened.
Do we know why these kids were convicted? Was it for petty stuff like you mention or was it for worse crimes? (I'm sure it was a mix; 4,000 kids... damn.)
And, regardless of their (possibly not even real) crimes, we can't be certain that they would have been convicted if the judges' profit motive hadn't been there.
I agree that the police are involved in ridiculous ways when kids misbehave at school, but I don't think it's fair to assume that all of these kids would still have had their lives ruined if it wasn't for some corrupt judges.
I'd be more sympathetic if the country doing this didn't have a history of imposing harsher sentences on minorities, criminalizing the ingestion of plant material, and a corrupt policing and judicial system.
Money, mostly. There is so much money in sending someone to prison it's absurd. Sure, it costs the taxpayers money, but we're always trying to transfer money from the lower and middle class up the chain.
And that's when it's on the up-and-up. Half the time it's horribly corrupt[0].
Although, there's always oppression. Occupy saw all kinds of police abuses, which transferred to these judicial abuses. Sure, this one woman has a voice, but she also knows her freedoms are at the whims of others, no matter the evidence (not allowed in court) in her favor.
Yeah - kid who was presumably abused by parents, sold drugs, beat up other kids, had access to firearms. Kind of glossed over a backstory in the article I felt.
The US justice system isn't known for reforming people, if anything it turns small-time criminals into hardened criminals. The parents probably have a better shot at doing something good.
Their side of the story was that Pennsylvanian's children correction facilities were crap and he did not feel comfortable sending kids there. He organized a group of investors to pay for a new facility. The real estate developer who got the contract to build it paid the judge a "finders fee" for the referral. The Judges didn't report the money. As far as the harsh sentences the judge was doing that for years as an over reaction to the Columbine thing. It's an interesting doc suggest checking it out.
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