AlterNet: PA Judges Got Cash to Lock Up Teens, Revealed a Broken Justice System

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PA Judges Got Cash to Lock Up Teens, Revealed a Broken Justice System

By Donald Cohen, AlterNet. Posted March 6, 2009.

The structure of private detention and prison contracting creates incentives and behaviors that poison our system of criminal justice.



Last month, two Pennsylvania judges pled guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately-operated detention centers. One judge secured the contracts for the firms and the other judge kept the centers filled by sentencing over 5,000 teens, many for first-time offenses, since the scheme started in 2003.

One high school student was sentenced to three months for mocking her assistant principal on a spoof MySpace page. She was handcuffed and taken away as her parents watched. "I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare," said the 17-year old.

Another teen, who had never been in trouble before, was sentenced to 90 days for a typical boyhood fight that resulted in another boy getting a black eye. His mom, who had been told to expect her son's wrist being slapped at sentencing, recounted the scene: "It's horrible to have your child taken way in shackles right in front of you when you think you're going home with him."

The sentencing judge, as part of the secret "placement guarantee agreement," sent hundreds of teenagers like these to detention facilities for minor and often questionable offenses.

The U.S. attorney did drop a bribery investigation into the two private detention companies, presumably agreeing with the companies' claims that the Judges demanded the money and they felt they had no choice but to fork it over. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/130346/pa_judges_got_cash_to_lock_up_teens%2C_revealed_a_broken_justice_system__/