Jailing Kids For Cash? That's What Two Pennsylvania Judges Have Been Accused Of Doing!

Money can be so alluring that it causes people to do anything to get it.That's why I think privately run prisons is an horrific idea!Jailing folks for profit is never a good thing.Look at what happened in this case.Two Pennsylvania judges are accused of receiving kickbacks for detaining juveniles.In other words,they got paid to provide inmates for a private detention center!I'm sure that this racket is going on in courts across the country!This is beyond evil.Here's more from CNN:

""This Pennsylvania case is a sad reminder of why kids need an attorney," she said.

A 1967 Supreme Court ruling says children have a right to counsel. However, many states allow children and their parents to appear without an attorney by completing a waiver.

Pennsylvania is among about half of the states in the country that allow waivers to be signed for juveniles to appear before a judge without an attorney, legal experts say.

In Luzerne County, teens who waived counsel were at greater risk of being sent to placement center than those with representation.

About 50 percent of the children who waived counsel before Ciavarella were sent to some kind of placement, the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center reports. In comparison, the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission in Pennsylvania found that 8.4 percent of juveniles across the state wind up in placement.

"When you have this many kids waiving counsel, then that's way out of line," said Marsha Levick, an attorney at the Juvenile Law Center. "There was no record [Ciavarella] was assuring the child and parent about the consequences of not having representation."

Minors charged with nonviolent crimes were often given harsher sentences than what probation officers recommended, court documents say. Other investigators say the trials lasted a few minutes at most.

All four of the teens cited in this story say they appeared before Ciavarella without lawyers.

"I was sort of shocked and taken aback," Hillary Transue, the MySpace offender who is now 17, said of her experience in Ciavarella's courtroom in April 2007. "I didn't really understand what was going on."

The Juvenile Law Center says it first red-flagged Ciavarella in 1999 after discovering that a 13-year-old boy was detained without being read his rights and had appeared in court without a lawyer. When the case became public, Ciavarella promised the public that every minor in his courtroom would have a lawyer.

Judges must verbally explain the consequences of appearing in court without counsel to minors and parents, lawyers say. Juvenile Law Center officials say Ciavarella neglected to do so in many cases.

Yet in the past five years, attorneys, law enforcement officials and other judges did not report Ciavarella's behavior to the Judicial Conduct Board of Pennsylvania, says Joseph A. Massa Jr., chief counsel at the board.

Privatizing detention facilities is a growing in popularity among governments because the companies say they offer lower rates than the state.

Pennsylvania has the second highest number of private facilities after Florida, accounting for about 11 percent of the private facilities in the United States, according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Critics say private prisons lack transparency because they don't go through the same inspections and audits as a state facility, and this may have allowed payoffs to go so long without being noticed.

"Once somebody is going to make more money by holding more kids, there is a pretty good predictable profit motive," said criminal justice consultant Judith Greene, who heads a nonprofit group called Justice Strategies. "It's predictable that companies are going to tolerate certain behaviors they shouldn't."

An audit draft obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer showed that Luzerne County was spending more than $1.2 million in expenses that weren't allowed under state regulations. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, the agency overseeing the audits, says the audit drafts are not final.

The audits also allege that two people paid the judges. Attorneys for former Mid-Atlantic owner Robert Powell say that their client is one of those people but that he was pressured by the judges to make payments. The attorneys say Powell never offered to pay the judges, never sought to influence any juvenile case and is now cooperating with the investigation. Zappala and Powell were partners until Zappala bought out Powell in 2008.

Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim of Berks County is reviewing the cases for minors who appeared before Ciavarella. Court officials say some children may have their records expunged or be granted new hearings.

The Philadelphia Bar Association has expressed outrage, assuring the public that the rest of the judges on the state's bench are "composed of highly qualified, honorable and honest people, who take their responsibilities to the public very seriously."

But some of the children -- many who, like Phillip Swartley, are now young adults -- have become jaded and believe that their cases were tainted in Ciavarella's courtroom.

After being sent to boarding school, Phillip, now 15, became withdrawn and depressed, his mother says.

"What do these kids see of the legal system and of authority figures?" Amy Swartley asked. "These kids see people who abuse their power. Now, we have a whole county and generation of children who have lost trust in the system."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the whole article here.