Kids-For-Cash Judges Ordered to Pay More Than $200M
Source: Associated Press
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press
Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of children who fell victim to their crimes.
U.S. District Judge Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 plaintiffs in a long-running civil suit against the judges.
In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.
Ciavarella ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to say goodbye to their families.
Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-08-17/kids-for-cash-judges-ordered-to-pay-more-than-200m
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