Meet a couple of cogs in the prison-industrial complex:
The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.
Also:
They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.
The poster child for the story? A 17-year-old girl, sentenced to three months in juvie by Ciavarella. For putting up a Myspace page making fun of her school's assistant principle [thanks, Alastair] principal.
[Update 2011-02-21 13:49] Convicted, finally.
2 comments:
Sorry to be a pedant (actually I'm not very sorry) but it's "principal". Mnemonic: "the princiPAL is your pal".
Not at all. Thanks for noting the blunder.
I don't usually make that one. I guess the story had me thinking of the utter lack of principles on display.
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