#michael conahan

[odinsblog]

🗣️ These were disproportionately Black and Brown kids!

Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan, who gained notoriety for wrongfully imprisoning juveniles in the Kids-for-Cash scandal, is one of nearly 1,500 inmates whose sentences President Joe Biden commuted Thursday as his term in office comes to a close.

Conahan, 72, was convicted along with former judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 74, of funneling juvenile defendants to two private, for-profit detention centers in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks.

Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges and was sentenced in 2011 to 17½ years in prison. However, he petitioned the courts for a “compassionate release” during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing that he was “in grave danger of not only contracting the virus, but of dying from the virus.”

In 2011, Conahan and another judge were convicted for wrongly sending juveniles to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. (4,000 juvenile convictions were later thrown out after the “Kids for Cash” scheme was exposed.) Conahan’s 17-year prison sentence was due to end in 2026, and he had been serving that sentence under home confinement since 2020. Sandy Fonzo, whose son died by suicide after being sent to a juvenile detention center, called Biden’s commutation “deeply painful” in a statement. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro publicly criticized Biden, as well. “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. “Conahan deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”

Sandy Fonzo, who famously confronted Ciavarella outside federal court over the suicide of her son after he was placed in juvenile detention, called the development “deeply painful.”

“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Fonzo said in a statement. “Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”

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[sarcasticcynic]

Two Pennsylvania judges were accused of taking bribes to send teenagers to private detention centers.

Pennsylvania judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan have pleaded guilty to collecting more than $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending an estimated 5,000 teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

The scheme was straightforward. First they shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, claiming that it was in “poor condition” and that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers. Then Conahan secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders.

Ciavarella, meanwhile, took advantage of the fact that juvenile proceedings are typically kept closed to the public to impose unusually harsh sentences for minor infractions--even on first-time offenders--so they could keep those detention centers filled. A couple of examples:

A “stellar student who had never been in trouble” built a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school. The page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke. Ciavarella “sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.”

Another boy who “had never been in trouble” got into a fight with another boy and gave him a black eye. Ciavarella “sentenced [him] to 90 days in a detention facility” on a charge of assault.

“He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.”

Despite pleading guilty to felony charges in federal court, Ciavarella still denies “sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.”

POSTSCRIPT: Both judges, by the way, are white. We have no information on the race or ethnicity of the 5000 juveniles whose lives they ruined.

[patrickbrianmooney]

President Joe Biden commuted the sentence of disgraced Luzerne County “Kids for Cash” Judge Michael Conahan. Conahan and fellow Judge Mark Ciavarella were convicted in connection with a scheme that sent thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks.

[randomwikiarticles]

The kids for cash scandal centered on judicial kickbacks to two judges at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, US.[1] In 2008, judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at a private prison operated by PA Child Care.[2]

Ciavarella disposed thousands of children to extended stays in youth centers for offenses as trivial as mocking an assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building.[3] After a judge rejected an initial plea agreement in 2009,[4][5] a federal grand jury returned a 48-count indictment.[6] In 2010, Conahan pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison.[7] Ciavarella opted to go to trial the following year. He was convicted on 12 of 39 counts and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison.[8]

In the wake of the scandal, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overturned hundreds of adjudications of delinquency in Luzerne County.[9] The Juvenile Law Center filed a class action lawsuit against the judges and numerous other parties,[10] and the Pennsylvania state legislature created a commission to investigate juvenile justice problems in the county.[11]

[arthropooda]

Two Pennsylvania judges ordered to pay $200m to kids-for-cash scandal victims

Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan accepted $2.8m in illegal payments to send children to for-profit jails

Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200m to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes.

US district judge Christopher Conner awarded $106m in compensatory damages and $100m in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”.

'Kids for cash' judge gets 28 years in Pennsylvania bribery case

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8m in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups.

[cctv-america-blog]

Former judge sent kids to jail for $2.6 million

Former Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced hundreds of thousands of kids to jail for a total of $2.6 million from juvenile facility owners. CCTV’s Wu Haojun reports. (more…)

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[sarahlee310-blog]

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.

[...]

The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention.  The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house.  So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.