Here's One Look At Privatization

We have seen, with The Bush Grindhouse, the rush to privatize aspects of what was formerly government responsibilities.

We had these Private Profiteers providing dirty water to our soldiers, as well as electrocuting them.

And, electrocuting the rebuilding of Iraq that they were hired for was godawful substandard, and mired in over-costs and greed.

So, when I descried this headline this morning, it was a head-shaker;

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

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.

This is/was a sick, demented rendition of "Bad Cop/Bad Cop".

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

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.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

So, these two assholes fucked up the lives of scores of teenagers (the one mentioned in the above article, for creating a MySpace page satirizing her school's assistant principle, earning her a profit-generating three-month sentence), so they could line their own pockets.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

The article states over 500 juveniles appeared before soon-to-be-ex-Judge Ciavarella.

Here's hoping the presiding Judge, who will have to decide on this plea bargain, rejects it, and hits these two cretins with a much stiffer sentence, say, a month for every kid they put away, strictly so they could make a profit.

Additionally, that they turn over their illegal gains to some youth program in the area.

And this presiding Judge should also look into the DA's office, or the local prosecutors - why are they placing so many teenagers, and those with relatively minor offenses (like building a MySpace page), into this hellhole of a system?

May a thousand MySpace pages get launched, mocking these guys.



Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers.