Forum Post: U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money
Posted 12 years ago on April 11, 2012, 11:41 a.m. EST by Devoghe
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U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/211740/u-s-judges-admit-to-jailing-children-for-money/#zL6SQdbki21iBLml.99
Philadelphia, Pa. – Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities. Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court,
“Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.”
The two judges face up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement made with the state.
At no point in time should the criminal justice system be privatized. Period.
It really is that simple.
Exactly. Or the education system. And, they're only getting 7 years?
Yeah, seven years and how many other lives were harmed in the process.
Private Prisons... yeah nothing can go wrong there...
That whole child welfare system is corrupt beyond belief. I learned a lot about that while living in Vermont. The common denominator in all the states is Health and Human Services, and their perverse funding system which encourages states to let kids languish in foster care for years and years and years. Usually they end up in troubled youth centers because that's where the really big bucks are. Show me a TY center, and you can bet there is someone with strong political ties running/making money off it.
In Vermont State Senator Sears Bennington County ran/runs one of those centers. Amazingly, he was allowed to do a judicial review of State Supreme Court Denise Johnson, who was very critical of the child welfare system. Then there is the SUPPOSED good for the child secretive Family Courts...incomplete investigations...untrained case workers, etc., etc. The one thing that this system fights tooth and nails is accountability
While I lived there, there was a young lady who brought some of injustices of that self-serving system to light. Her and her sister, both easily adobtable lived in foster care throughout most of her childhood after reunification with her mother was found not to be possible. At 16 or 17 years of age, this delightful young lady....demanded to be adopted. They finally relented. A family in my little town adopted her.
The reason her story got out is the most intersting one. It's because she went on to become Miss Teen Vermont, and then Miss Teen USA! She wrote a book called Lost in The System. She was not lost though. They knew exactly where she was, and they wanted to keep her there because that's where the buck$ are! It's that simple. Don't think this system can be that evil? Think again.
So we know what punishment the judges face... what about the companies that think it's okay to give a kickback in exchange for depriving someone of their freedom?
Can someone in Pennsylvania start a petition? The state needs to cancel all current contracts due to a flagrant breach of contract by the companies, and never do business with either of these companies ever again.
This needs to be written in such a way that the officers and boards of the companies can't reorganize under a different name and tax id number and do the exact same thing. Privatized prisons are a disgrace to our justice system. The government that sends people to prison should be directly responsible for the time and treatment of the prisoners. Monetizing someone's freedom should never EVER be allowed.
Also from the article: "Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received sentences that far outweighed their crimes. She said the center will be suing the judges and the companies to compensate the victims."
If these judges get the absolute max sentence, 7 years = 2,556 days. Do we really think the 1000 - 2000 kids each served an extra day or two on crimes they were already going up for? Or do we think that hundreds (thousands?) of kids should have gotten fines, probation and community service for minor offenses, and instead were taken away from their families, schools and communities, subjected to physical, mental, and frequently sexual abuse, and then stigmatized for life after the ordeal?
What is that worth when it happens to your child?
This punishment, like ALL recent punishments for upper class white collar criminals, is a slap on the wrist compared to the damage they have done to individuals and to society.
...AND IT GETS BETTER.
Apparently the two weasel judges had plea bargains get rejected in 2009 because they weren't cooperating, were actively obstructing justice, and maintaining that they had done nothing wrong besides fail to report that income on their taxes.
To quote: "Under the deals, they had been guaranteed an 87-month sentence, but now could face up to 25 years in prison."
87 months is 7.25 years.
They have been free for 2.5 years after depriving children of their freedom in exchange for money.
And now they face... 7 years. Probably because the DA is the daughter of one of them. Must be nice to have connections in the legal system so that you don't end up serving a ridiculously harsh sentence, eh boys?
http://citizensvoice.com/news/defiance-doomed-ciavarella-conahan-s-plea-deals-1.158948#axzz1rl76pzZ1
Please notice, my fellow 99%, that the focus of this article is on tax evasion (money), whether payments (money) were bribes (money), kickbacks (money), or finder's fees (money).
Interestingly enough, nobody is talking about the crime of falsely imprisoning children. We just want to know if the guy that did it paid his taxes.
I remember reading about this case a while back. There was a lot of backlash regarding the imprisonment of these kids. If I remember, they were minority children who were deliberately targeted, arrested and medicated. They called this , ' Kids for Cash' or something like that. I believe they were getting kickbacks from a privately owned prison who was getting kickbacks from drug companies. It's truly heinous and represents an extremely dangerous mindset that could affect all of us at some time in our lives. This is a form of genocidal behavior, VERY similar to those who carried out the holocaust. If our judges, those who are to uphold the sacred laws of this land, can have such little regard for human life that they are willing to accept money to harm another human being, then what hope do we have of ever trusting our leadership at any level. The judges need to be imprisoned for life, plain and simple and we need to make certain that this happens.
Hey, at least they caught the bastards this time. More importantly, though, we need to put an end to the practice of privatizing prisons and start returning some of the currently private facilities to public hands. There exists a blatant conflict of interest between the citizenry, who expect prison sentences to be handed out only where deemed necessary and of the minimum length needed to ensure protection of the citizenry and punishment/rehabilitation of the criminal, and private facilities who make money off of every new inmate they receive.
This basically creates a perverse incentive on the part of private security and prison firms to push for artificially strict sentencing standards beyond what is necessary and proper, and to increase both the number and severity of crimes that can land one behind bars as a means of inflating their bottom lines. That is just as scary as outright buying off judges, and yet it remains perfectly legal. As ugly as this is, one could argue that in some ways things like this needed to happen before people at large were willing to examine the ramifications of prison privatization.
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You guys that are coming out against this are looking at the wrong side of the coin. The problem here is the govt courts & the corrupt political system. Corporations that are almost exclusively govt contractors aren't free market entities but part of the fascist economy that has developed here. Purely govt courts & prisons are the reason we have monstrosities like the racist war on drugs which has ruined more lives than the 2 judges. If the govt didn't have the means of enforcing things like drug laws they wouldn't pass them. We'd all be better off.
These are all elite people running these things...and the elites also run the most profitable and massive global child trafficking paedophilia rings. Connecting the dots isn't hard.
These are the reasons we need to counter the abridging of free speech, so that the average American can be aware of the jeopardy our unconstitutional government places our children in.
Article V of the US Constitution has the authority to address all of this, but we need to use "praparatory amendment" to be assured that the convention has maximum constitutional intent. This thread here at the articlevconvention.org forum tells it all.
http://articlevconvention.org/showthread.php?33-Amendment-By-Layers-Of-Priority-Amendment-Package-Making-CONST.-Intent
Thank you! Very concise website...I especially like the quote;
"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln knew that the people rule, and through Article V we have the authority, but we must unify with our constitutional intent, which protects our lives. Media needs to be redressed for its betrayals. Again, Article V. There is a catch 22 here. We need free speech in media, but won't get it until an Article V, but need the unity in order to compel an Article V, but to unify we need media.
This is where the sincere and clear thinking people of OWS (if there are any) might have an effect still. There are many Americans tha cannot relate to occupy because there is no legal process invoked by what they do. Americans do not need people in parks protesting problems, they need clear thinking people that can define what creates unity the use it to unite.
I love the preparatory amendment concept. America simply has to agree that America can be made more constitutional by seeing that the abridging of free speech is countered, that campaign finance must be reformed, that voting sytems and elections must be secured.
And that, from such a constitutional position, it can properly conduct an Article V convention and address every problem any American can think of that others recognize.