A “for-profit” prison developer and a county attorney bribed two Pennsylvania judges $2.9 million to help build and then push youths into their prisons in what has been called the largest judicial corruption scandal in U.S. history. The judges used their position and influence to eliminate the developers’ competition: the existing, county-run detention facilities. They then helped the developers get two new, privately owned detention centers built in their area.
In 2011, Luzerne County judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pled guilty to fraud and tax evasion. Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years on August 11. Conahan awaits sentencing.
Ciavarella’s attorneys are appealing his sentence on the grounds it is “excessively long” compared to national averages. This is ironic, considering Judge Ciavarella earned a reputation as “Mr. Zero Tolerance” for sentencing defendants two and a half times more often than other judges in his state. Ciavarella’s sentences were longer and more harsh than those imposed by other judges. He also sent prisoners to the same “for-profit” detention centers he and Judge Conahan helped build.
Under a just system, the two judges and their co-conspirators would have been held accountable for the false and unnecessary imprisonment of thousands. Instead, they were charged with tax evasion and fraud.
From 2003 to 2008, Ciavarella heard 6,500 cases. Fifty percent of those cases appeared before him without an attorney—defendants were often pressured into waiving their right to legal counsel without being informed of the consequences. In spite of repeated petitions and requests, both the state of Pennsylvania and its judicial review board refused to act. Finally in 2009, due to the persistence and pressure of affected families and community members, the case received wider national attention. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court still had to be pressured into deeming the case a “travesty of justice” and overturn thousands of Ciavarella’s convictions.
Ciavarella was Luzerne County’s juvenile court judge. The children he sentenced were as young as 10 years old and were taken away in handcuffs for what were minor, misdemeanor offenses. Some were imprisoned with no evidence of any crime committed at all: a 13-year-old mocked her vice principal on MySpace; another 13-year-old failed to testify against a classmate; a 14-year-old slapped her friend; and a 15-year-old’s note was used to keep her detained indefinitely.
Ciavarella's courtroom has been compared to an assembly line, in which he spent but a minute or two on each young person appearing before him.
“The whole thing lasted about 30 seconds,” said Hillary Transue, after receiving a three-month sentence. Once detained, she was only allowed to speak to her family for eight minutes a week. One father, after having his young son taken out of school in handcuffs, commented, “Ciavarella sold kids like they were cattle, Black or white, it didn’t matter.”
Ciavarella used his position as judge to impose long sentences on youth in order to keep the privately run detention centers he personally profited from continuously filled to capacity. The owners of these “for-profit” facilities then billed the county based on their number of full beds. They operated for years at full occupancy and kicked money back to the two judges in return.
The U.S. prison system is brutally anti-worker when run by the federal government. The capitalist system’s inherent drive for profit, however, pushes capitalists to look for ever more ways to increase their rate of profit. In this, and other instances, they have found ways to further monetize jails, making them even worse for working people in the process.
Privately run prisons have exploited California’s notorious “3 strikes” laws, which sent repeat offenders away for life. The resulting over-crowding required the state to “outsource” excess prisoners. As states’ anti-immigration laws became more punitive, jails became further over-crowded. As a result, imprisoned, undocumented workers were added to the list of those farmed out to privately run facilities. One result has been a “building boom” of privately owned prisons.
More often than not, individuals like Ciavarella and Conahan are protected and rewarded by a system that values profit first and foremost, and puts “meeting people’s needs” dead last, if at all.
Lawyers representing the families of Ciavarella’s victims hope his sentencing this month will “restore their trust in the rule of law.” If the judges were an anomaly in a system that otherwise operates fairly, that would be possible. The U.S. justice system is, at its heart, corrupt because it serves the interests of the small class of owners over those of the vast majority of working people.
Ciavarella does not represent that one, rare, “rogue” judge; he accurately represents capitalist values. His actions are the inevitable result of a system that rewards the constant exploitation of working and oppressed people. It is time to abolish that system and replace it with one that puts human needs first.
