Judge gets 28 years for selling children to private prisons

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03 May 2013, 6:24 pm

From http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/judge-sentenced-to-28-years-in-prison-for-selling-kids-to-private-prisons?news=843116:

Quote:

Accused of perpetrating a “profound evil,” former Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for illegally accepting money from a juvenile-prison developer while he spent years incarcerating thousands of young people.

Prosecutors said Ciavarella sent juveniles to jail as part of a “kids for cash” scheme involving Robert Mericle, builder of the PA and Western PA Child Care juvenile detention centers. The ex-judge was convicted in February of 12 counts that included racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion.

...

Once the case against Ciavarella surfaced, special investigative panels began reviewing cases he handled from 2003 to 2008. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that he denied about 5,000 juveniles, some as young as ten, their constitutional rights, leading to the vacating of their convictions.

Among the young people exploited by Ciavarella were 15-year-old Hillary Transue, who was sentenced to three months at a juvenile detention center for mocking an assistant principal on a MySpace page; and 13-year-old Shane Bly, who was sent to a boot camp for two weekends after being accused of trespassing in a vacant building.

28 years is far too lenient for people like him.

eric76
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03 May 2013, 6:27 pm

I just noticed that the story is from August 14, 2011.

I guess he's been there for more than a year and a half now. Good riddance!

OliveOilMom
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03 May 2013, 8:14 pm

I could see doing that with some soldier status 17 year olds, but come on now.

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03 May 2013, 9:19 pm

I wonder how much of that 28 years he'll actually serve.
Hopefully some other prisoners will kill him but only after he's spent several years behind barbed wire.

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Dox47
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04 May 2013, 3:01 am

I remember this guy; he has a place of prominence on my "people I'd kill if I were diagnosed with a terminal illness" list. I call it Plan Breaking Dexter.

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04 May 2013, 10:28 pm

Judging from his photo, he'd be lucky to live another 28 years.

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08 May 2013, 4:35 pm

I bet a whole lot of inmates would love to get their hands on a crooked judge. Especially if any of them are the kids whose lives he had ruined.

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08 May 2013, 10:15 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella

"On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. With good behavior, he could be released in less than 24 years, when he would be 85."

Hopefully, some BOP guards and his fellow prisoners will make sure he doesn’t get that good behavior early release.

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xenon13
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09 May 2013, 10:47 am

I think those who proposed these private prison schemes should go to prison as these kinds of events became inevitable as a result and is probably going on elsewhere right now.

Tensu
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10 May 2013, 8:01 pm

Could someone please enlighten me on how people can make a profit on incarcerating children? I'm ignorant of the details.

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10 May 2013, 9:04 pm

Tensu wrote:

Could someone please enlighten me on how people can make a profit on incarcerating children? I'm ignorant of the details.

Not children in the classical sense but adolescents.
The correctional facility is privately owned and operated and they get paid by the state for each inmate they keep.
The more inmates they keep the more money they get paid.
The judge in this case was sentencing these kids to jail time for petty crimes to increase the profits of the correctional facility.
The correctional facility was rewarding the judge with money for giving them all that extra business.

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Tensu
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10 May 2013, 9:11 pm

But the thing I don't get is how is the state paying private prisons to keep inmates any different from the state funding the prisons themselves? And if it isn't, then why do private prisons even exist? shouldn't they not be used to prevent this type of thing?

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10 May 2013, 9:18 pm

Tensu wrote:

A state run facility gets budgeted by the fiscal year. The private ones, at least in some cases, get paid for each inmate.
Something like that, anyway.

As a conservative I'm all for smaller government but in this case I believe the prisons are easily within the role of government and should be kept that way.

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10 May 2013, 9:32 pm

I can't even see the argument for private prisons in the name of small government being made. As the private prison is still funded by taxpayer money, but the taxpayers would presumably have less ability to influence the activities of a private prison than they would a public one, if anything it is bigger government as it takes control of prisons out of the hands of the taxpayers while still requiring them to fund them.

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10 May 2013, 10:23 pm

Tensu wrote:

Are private prisons funded by tax payers?

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11 May 2013, 2:52 pm

The entire prison system in America is geared to this, government or privately run. The prison industry is a huge part of our economy, we need our prisons to be full. These prisons, which are usually in rural areas, support whole communities. They'll never want fairer sentencing or ending drug prohibition. They've been co-opted by the police state.

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