There are some who are not entirely convinced of the evils that may come out of the prison industrial complex. This story might change your mind. A judge in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for literally exchanging young people for cash. Mark Ciavarella Jr. was convicted of accepting money in exchange for choosing to incarcerate thousands of young people into the facility of a developer who was paying him under the table.
Allgov.com details the “kids for cash” program, which revealed the depth of corruption that has led to increased incarceration rates, driven partly by the growth in private prisons seeking profits at all cost. One company, the Corrections Corporation of America, even agreed to buy the prisons from 48 states, as long as lawmakers guaranteed them 90% occupancy rates.
Robert Mericle, builder of the PA and Western PA Child Care juvenile detention centers is one of the other culprits. The judge was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He is also being told to repay $1.2 million in restitution.
Prosecutors reviewed all of the cases over which the judge presided, from 2003 through 2008, concluding that he had denied the constitutional rights of as many as 5,000 juveniles, some as young as 10 years old. One student was given three months in a detention center for mocking an assistant principal on his Myspace page. Cases like this make the school-to-prison pipeline all too real.
