US judges admit jailing children for money

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Two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting more than $US2.6 million ($3.9 million) from a private youth detention centre in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/13/2490498.htm

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Type: Discussion • Score: 5 • Views: 1,436 • Replies: 13

@hingehead,

Judges have certain degree of power in handling cases brought before them. That's why people bribe them to decide a case one way or the other.

1 Reply

@Legaladvocate,

Yeeeeesss. That seems obvious. Are you advocating the practice?

1 Reply

@hingehead,

This is unbelievable! Utterly corrupt & monstrously evil. I'm gobsmacked.:

Quote:

.....Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced to detention centres for minor offences that would typically have been classified as misdemeanours, according to the Juvenile Law Centre, a Philadelphia non-profit group.

One 17-year-old boy was sentenced to three months' detention for being in the company of another minor caught shoplifting.

Others were given similar sentences for "simple assault" resulting from a schoolyard scuffle that would normally draw a warning, a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Law Centre said.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in US courts.

But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offences did not require one. .....

Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/13/2490498.htm

2 Replies

@msolga,

Privatised ******* detention.

A sewer.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

Yeah, I know, Deb. Shocking.

And I'd imagine that it would be mostly the poor & those who don't know their rights (or how to fight for them) who would have been affected.

1 Reply

@msolga,

Quote:

This is unbelievable! Utterly corrupt & monstrously evil. I'm gobsmacked.:

No question...

Again to my thinking we need to eliminate every sort of system of career or money incentives to put people in prison, which would mean getting rid of the so-called 'adversarial' system of justice for starters.

Too many people are sitting around in prisons because their lawyer simply was not as good as some prosecutor on a particular day and too many political careers have been built on the blood of innocents.

It's only recently that one of those lunatics (Nifong) ever reached any sort of a point at which his own people basically threw him under the bus because they couldn't handle the embarassment he was causing them. People like Janet Reno and Scott Harshbarger have skated merrily along for years after their evil deeds were generally understood.

0 Replies

@msolga,

Quote:

And I'd imagine that it would be mostly the poor & those who don't know their rights (or how to fight for them) who would have been affected.

Too right.

You don't see many "middle class" youths -- let alone those from well-to-do families -- in lockup. They can afford good lawyers, as opposed to public defenders, and in the case of corrupt judges they can pay more than the private detention centers. I worked as a teacher in the juvenile justice system for a dozen years and, from my observation, the population in these centers is at the very least 80 to 85 % minority. Black, Hispanic and Asian children make up the vast majority of the detainees.

0 Replies

@hingehead,

No, I am not an advocate of any illegal or immoral practice. Cases should be decided on merits including the evidence presented before the court.

2 Replies

@Legaladvocate,

LA wrote:

Cases should be decided on merits including the evidence presented before the court.

Am I being nitpicky (and I certainly can be) but what merits can there be besides evidence? Even considerations about personal circumstances are evidence - aren't they? I shouldn't ask really - I know diddly about jurisprudence.

1 Reply

@hingehead,

When you decide the case on the merits, you consider the evidence, arguments, etc. When you say evidence, these are those proved in court using the rules on evidence like best evidence rule, secondary evidence, etc. If you say that the merits of the case are all evidence then I say you are wrong because arguments, jurisprudence,etc. do not necessarily conform to the the rules of evidence. Hence, they do not comprise evidence itself.

0 Replies

@Legaladvocate,

Legaladvocate wrote:

Cases should be decided on merits including the evidence presented before the court.

Huh?

Legaladvocate wrote:

When you decide the case on the merits, you consider the evidence, arguments, etc. When you say evidence, these are those proved in court using the rules on evidence like best evidence rule, secondary evidence, etc. If you say that the merits of the case are all evidence then I say you are wrong because arguments, jurisprudence,etc. do not necessarily conform to the the rules of evidence. Hence, they do not comprise evidence itself.

Huh?

1 Reply

@Debra Law,

Debra Law wrote:

Legaladvocate wrote:

Cases should be decided on merits including the evidence presented before the court.

Huh?

Legaladvocate wrote:
When you decide the case on the merits, you consider the evidence, arguments, etc. When you say evidence, these are those proved in court using the rules on evidence like best evidence rule, secondary evidence, etc. If you say that the merits of the case are all evidence then I say you are wrong because arguments, jurisprudence,etc. do not necessarily conform to the the rules of evidence. Hence, they do not comprise evidence itself.

Huh?

Me thinks LA is going for some high score on a weekly vocab hotword challenge.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Diest TKO wrote:

Me thinks LA is going for some high score on a weekly vocab hotword challenge.

I tried to decipher LA's string of words, but the process was too frustrating. I hope LA comes back and attempts an explanation.

0 Replies

US judges admit jailing children for money

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