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Eugene

(61,595 posts)
Wed Aug 17, 2022, 09:35 AM Aug 2022

Kids-for-cash judges ordered to pay more than $200M

Source: Associated Press

Kids-for-cash judges ordered to pay more than $200M

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
August 17, 2022

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 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.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/crime-trending-news-government-and-politics-6f30f575dc739415af1e5b47b1be50f0

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Kids-for-cash judges ordered to pay more than $200M (Original Post) Eugene Aug 2022 OP
What about the companies that paid the judges? tinrobot Aug 2022 #1
I'm gonna read this awful story... Cracklin Charlie Aug 2022 #2
This message was self-deleted by its author intheflow Aug 2022 #3

Cracklin Charlie

(12,904 posts)
2. I'm gonna read this awful story...
Wed Aug 17, 2022, 10:02 AM
Aug 2022

But these evil effers better be in, or going to, prison when I get to the end of it.

They sent eight year olds to detention to enrich themselves? Gross. Me. Out.

Response to Eugene (Original post)

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