Two judges of a juvenile court in Pennsylvania jailed kids so that the judges and their friends could make money. To make it more likely that the kids would be convicted, they denied them the right to counsel in half of the cases and, in many cases, they denied the pleas of the prosecutors that certain kids not be jailed. Many of the kids came from difficult family situations; many did stupid things, such as, in one case, putting up on the Web a caricature of an assistant principal.
The judges' goal was to get as many kids as possible into private detention centers owned by a friend. Before the judges were caught they had pocketed $2,600,000.
A sidelight of the stimulus - $800,000,000 is allotted to the construction of private prisons. Who really benefits from this? We have got to move away from our belief that prisons are the answer to our problems.
2 comments:
How utterly disgraceful! Perhaps it's time to reappraise the system that allows such men into judicial office?
U R Absolutely Correct! (And how many times do you get that told to you unequivocally???) I saw this last week; it is the epitome of what makes lawyers look bad... C.
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