Academic

Stunning Prison Scandal: Commodification of Children, Slavery, Or Simple Corruption?

By Dan Filler

Out of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania - home of Wilkes-Barre - comes one of the most remarkable and appalling public corruption scandals I've heard to date.    At least two Luzerne County judges were involved in a plan to send hundreds of juveniles charged as delinquents to two privately owned detention centers in exchange for millions in kickbacks.  Judges Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan plead guilty in Federal Court last week and accepted 87 month sentences; a new judge has been charged this week.  The complaint suggests that judges were paid money under the guise of "broker fees"  and rental payments for a Florida condo. 

These children were sent to detention notwithstanding recommendations by probation officers that the kids return home.   According to the brief of the Department of Public Welfare, Luzerne County teens were ten times more likely to go unrepresented than the state average and were 2 1/2 times more likely to be placed outside of their home.  It's so bad that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is actually using its Kings Bench power to determine if any kids are improperly detained.  The indictment, plea agreements, and other materials are here.

I can't stop thinking about how children were appropriated by the judges, in this case, and essentially sold for cash.  Human beings, human bodies, were systematically captured, cuffed, and physically removed from their homes and families.  They were then sold - perhaps rented is a better word - to these private prisons.  Is this slavery?  If children are wrongfully taken from the parents for cash, that seems to fit the bill.  It certainly is commodification of the childrens' bodies.   It's easy to look at this story as a simple corruption matter.  It is that - and it will result in the usual diminution of trust in our justice system.  But the appropriation of human beings for profit is not only deeply immoral - and it is that; it's also a theft that can never be compensated. 

Under what theory do we punish these judges?  Deterrence, sure.  But if there is ever a case for retribution - and I mean the coarsest concept of just deserts - this looks like it.  Trusted state officials commandeering the state to sell children?  I think an 87 month sentence looks like a pretty good deal.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 04, 2009 (boomark / email).