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.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WOW, how unsurprising, yet utterly disgusting.