JAILING TEENAGERS AND THE POISONING OF PUBLIC PURPOSE

Last month, two Pennsylvania judges pled guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to the two private detention centers. One judge secured the contracts for the firms to house the teenagers and the other judge kept the centers filled by sentencing enough teens. The judges, as part of their secret “placement guarantee agreement,” sent hundreds of teenagers to detention facilities for minor and often questionable teen offenses. One high school student was sentenced to three months for mocking her assistant principal on a spoof MySpace page. The U.S. attorney did drop a bribery investigation into the two private detention companies, presumably agreeing with the companies’ claims that the Judges demanded the money and they felt they had no choice. continue reading