Jailing kids for cash
By
Amy Goodman Read Spanish Version
From
Truthdig.com
As
many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up
to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks
from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that
benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed
and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.
and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while
imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case
offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison
industry that is flourishing in the United States.
Take
the story of Jamie Quinn. When she was 14 years old, she was
imprisoned for almost a year. Jamie, now 18, described the incident
that led to her incarceration:
"I
got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened
was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the
same thing back. There [were] no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was
just her word against my word."
Jamie
was placed in one of the two controversial facilities, PA Child Care,
then bounced around to several other locations. The 11-month
imprisonment had a devastating impact on her. She told me: "People
looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person,
because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up …
because I was away and got locked up. I’m still struggling in school,
because the schooling system in facilities like these places [are]
just horrible."
She
began cutting herself, blaming medication that she was forced to
take: "I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I
went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn’t
even know what they were. They said if I didn’t take them, I wasn’t
following my program." She was hospitalized three times.
Jamie
Quinn is just one of thousands that these two corrupt judges locked
up. The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center got involved when
Hillary Transue was sent away for three months for posting a Web site
parodying the assistant principal at her school. Hillary clearly
marked the Web page as a joke. The assistant principal didn’t find it
funny, apparently, and Hillary faced the notoriously harsh Judge
Ciavarella.
As
Bob Schwartz of the Juvenile Law Center told me: "Hillary had,
unknown to her, signed a paper, her mother had signed a paper, giving
up her right to a lawyer. That made the 90-second hearing that she
had in front of Judge Ciavarella pretty much of a kangaroo court."
The JLC found that in half of the juvenile cases in Luzerne County,
defendants had waived their right to an attorney. Judge Ciavarella
repeatedly ignored recommendations for leniency from both prosecutors
and probation officers. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard the
JLC’s case, then the FBI began an investigation, which resulted in
the two judges entering guilty-plea agreements last week for tax
evasion and wire fraud.
They
are expected to serve seven years in federal prison. Two separate
class-action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the imprisoned
children.
This
scandal involves just one county in the U.S., and one relatively
small private prison company. According to The Sentencing Project,
"the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with
2.1 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails — a
500 percent increase over the past thirty years." The Wall
Street Journal reports that "[p]rison companies are preparing
for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it
increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to
build and operate their own jails." For-profit prison companies
like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (formerly
Wackenhut) are positioned for increased profits. It is still not
clear what impact the just-signed stimulus bill will have on the
private prison industry (for example, the bill contains $800 million
for prison construction, yet billions for school construction were
cut out).
Congress
is considering legislation to improve juvenile justice policy,
legislation the American Civil Liberties Union says is "built on
the clear evidence that community-based programs can be far more
successful at preventing youth crime than the discredited policies of
excessive incarceration."
Our
children need education and opportunity, not incarceration. Let the
kids of Luzerne County imprisoned for profit by corrupt judges teach
us a lesson. As young Jamie Quinn said of her 11-month imprisonment,
"It just makes me really question other authority figures and
people that we’re supposed to look up to and trust."
Denis
Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy
Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily
international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in
North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award,
dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and received the
award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
