Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.
First read this on the e-mail list serve I’m on for the website Community Labor News. In an article by Mumia Abu-Jamal, he writes:
In Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, there are 9 judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Two of them just pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to convict and sentence juveniles to a private prison, so that they could get kickbacks from the prison’s builders and owners.
…
At least 22% of their judges have admitted being corrupt, in the sordid business of selling the freedom and well-being of poor children for profit.
And the worst part is that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court originally rejected the petition to hear the case.
The media reports on this outrage and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expresses a little interest. This is the nature of judging these days; when even kids are expendable fodder for the Prison Industrial Complex.
The fact that any prisoners are being held in private prisons, anywhere in the country, is disturbing.
But the fact that children are routinely sentenced to private prisons is downright horrific.
It is an unfortunate reality that, even in a free country, on occasion juveniles must be removed from the custody of their parents. But consider the implications when the state removes children from the care of their legal guardians, and then outsources that care to for-profit corporations. Additionally, these for-profit prisons have no incentive to take any action that would result in a child being released early, and have a strong incentive to try to punish children by extending their prison sentence.
Were this a reasonable society, the fact that multiple judges were found to be conspiring to use children for monetary gain would inspire every state legislature, in every state of the union, to immediately introduce legislation to end the outsourcing of juvenile detention.