We turn to the latest news in the so-called "kids-for-cash" scandal
in Pennsylvania, in which judges took money in exchange for sending
juvenile offenders to for-profit youth jails. In 2011, former Luzerne
County Judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted of accepting bribes for
putting juveniles into detention centers operated by the companies PA
Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care.
Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, are said to have received
$2.6 million for their efforts. Now the private juvenile-detention
companies at the heart of the kids-for-cash scandal in Pennsylvania have
settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5 million. The state has also passed
much-needed reforms aimed at improving its juvenile justice system and
ensuring such abuses are not repeated. We are joined in Philadelphia by
Marsha Levick, chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, which helped
expose the corrupt judges and represented the families’ class action suit.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the latest news on the
so-called "kids for cash" scandal in Pennsylvania, in which judges took
money in exchange for sending thousands of juvenile offenders to
for-profit youth jails. In 2011, former Luzerne County Judge Mark
Ciavarella was convicted of accepting bribes for putting juveniles into
detention centers operated by the companies PA Child Care and a sister
company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Ciavarella and another judge,
Michael Conahan, are said to have received $2.6 million for their
efforts.
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