Kids for Cash: Private Prisons Operate for Profit

Texas School Police Ticketing Students as Young as 6

January 10, 2011

The Lookout at Yahoo News! - School police officers in Texas are doling out more tickets to children as young as 6, who under past disciplinary practices would have been sent to the principal's office instead, according to a report by a Texas nonprofit.

"Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights, and truancy once meant a trip to the principal's office. Today, such misbehavior results in a Class C misdemeanor ticket and a trip to court for thousands of Texas students and their families each year," says the Appleseed Texas report (PDF).

It examined data from 22 of the state's largest school districts and eight municipal courts. Over six years, school police issued 1,000 tickets to elementary school children in 10 school districts.

The study found that where a child attends school -- not the severity of the allegation -- was the best indicator of whether the child would be ticketed instead of sent to the principal's office. Black students and special education students were overrepresented among those ticketed.

Most Texas schools have police officers, and that staffing is on the rise. The most common infractions earning misdemeanor tickets: disorderly conduct and leaving school without permission.

Appleseed recommends that Texas ban ticketing for children under 14.

Here's a graph from the report showing how increased police presence resulted in increased ticketing over time in five districts:

Father facing fines for teen's truancy

Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Arrested for Sending Kids to Jail for Failure to Pay Truancy Fines

July 30, 2010

ValleyCentral.com - An Hidalgo County Judge finds herself on the other side of the bench after being indicted.

Judge Mary Alice Palacios of Precinct 4, Place 2 is accused of sending kids to jail for months at a time because they couldn't pay their truancy fine.

Shielded by family and friends, Judge Palacios made her way from the Hidalgo County Jail at 12:32pm Friday just 15 minutes after being booked into the jail.

Palacios is being charged with official oppression and was given a $2,500 PR bond, after an Hidalgo grand jury handed down an indictment against her Wednesday.

Before being whisked away in an awaiting vehicle, she rolled down the window and thanked those who supported her through the years.

"Thank you to everyone for all of their support" said the Judge.

She also stated "the truth will come out and you'll hear it."

Olga Rodriguez, Palacios' sister, told Action 4 News what's happening isn't fair. She added that all of the family will stand behind her, because she's done nothing wrong.

"She's taking it hard, but we're going to get through this. We'll be there and so will you" said Rodriguez.

Palacios has been under fire for her truancy practices in the past, but this is the first time she's actually been charged.

Judge Palacios is also facing a federal lawsuit filed against her by the ACLU for several kids she allegedly put in jail for unpaid truancy fines.

Judge Mary Alice Palacios’ Statement:

First, I thank my supporters for their thoughts and prayers. I ask the community to not pass judgment on me because there’s more to this than meets the eye. I want to assure everyone that my conscious is clean. I have done nothing wrong, let alone illegal. I take my job very seriously and respect your office, and the position to which you voted for me into 10 years ago. That old adage that “any DA can indict a ham sandwich”, couldn’t be more appropriate to a case than the one I’ve been put in. The honest truth is that this case is personal between Rene Guerra [Hidalgo County Judge] and myself. Rene Guerra is a tyrant, and this is what happens when you refuse to bow down to a tyrant. Sometime back, he personally called me and demanded that I not do something pertaining to a friend of his. I refused and he threatened me. I was expecting his wrath and am now facing this indictment. His office is both defending me in a civil lawsuit and now prosecuting me. Both stemming from the same matters. Let there be no doubt, this is as personal as it gets. I repeat, I have done nothing illegal. I have done nothing to bring disrespect to your office or the position you have entrusted me with. I look forward to defending myself in our open and public court system, where the truth will come out. I will vindicate and clear mine and my family’s good name.

Penn. Judges Accused of Taking Kickbacks for Jailing Youths in Private Prisons

Originally Published on February 12, 2009

The New York Times - At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke. Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.

And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.

But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.

“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”

No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”

Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.

Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.

“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”

On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.

Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.

“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”

"Kids for Cash": the Dangers of Private Prisons Laid Bare

Originally Published on March 27, 2009

CCJHR Blog - Last month two Pennsylvania judges pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges which relate to the jailing of around 2000 children between June 2000 and January 2007. The children were sent to two private detention facilities in exchange for bribes worth more than $2.6 million; the private prison companies belonged to the Mid Atlantic Youth Services Corp. The case has become known as the “kids for cash” scandal and has raised questions about the close ties between the courts and private contractors, as well as the harsh treatment adolescents have received in the criminal justice system in the Pennsylvania and beyond.

President Judge Mark Ciavarella and former President Judge Michael Conahan agreed to 87-month prison sentences for themselves, but as Jurist has reported, the pleas will not be formally accepted until sentencing, which could take up to 90 days. Ciavarella claims he took the money innocently, assuming it was a legitimate "finder's fee" from the private company for help in building the detention centre. He denies sending children to custody in return for kickbacks. This matter will also have to be determined by the court.

The story did not receive much attention this side of the Atlantic, although the Guardian covered it and George Monbiot wrote a good piece where he provided the following examples of the types of sentencing decisions the judges made in relation to children coming before them:

“Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15 year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Mr Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14 year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her.”

Monbiot’s focus was not so much the issue of judicial corruption but more the fact that “This is what happens when public services are run for profit.” He reports that the judges also took action which resulted in the closing of a competing prison which operated in the public sector. The money was diverted to a private company called PA Child Care (PACC) which it helped to build a new facility in the area.

And it is this point that links to more commonplace acts of corruption and bizarre decision making regarding the operation of the prison sector in the USA. Where prisons are run for profit, there is a corporate need to ensure that the market for imprisonment does not fail. Therefore people must be imprisoned. The ultimate connection between both the politicians responsible for criminal justice policy and the courts can then become tainted at best, and corrupted at worst, as in this case.

The legal fall out from the Pennsylania corruption cases is now being felt. On 26th March the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that convictions of hundreds of children be overturned and the relevant records expunged without hearing. This decision followed the recommendation of Special Master Grim which was made in order to investigate the “alleged travesty of juvenile justice …[and] to identify the affected juveniles and rectify the situation as fairly and swiftly as possible”.

Grim recommended that this should be done in all non-serious cases where the juveniles appearing before Ciavarella were not represented by lawyers, something that happened in half of the cases before him. Grim wrote:

“This prompt action in these non-serious cases will be at least one step towards righting the wrongs which were visited upon these juveniles and will help restore confidence in the justice system. Furthermore, it is not in the interest of the community to relitigate these non-serious cases, nor do I believe that the victims would be well-served by new proceedings.”

In more serious cases the juveniles can object to a decision and the Supreme Court will examine those cases.

University of Pitsburgh School of Law Professor David Harris criticised the plea deal made by the judges and is quoted on Jurist

"I don’t think seven years is nearly enough for the harm they did to the system of justice, to our collective belief in the rule of law, to these children, and to their families."

His point is well made. The judges sent children to prison establishments and boot camps in situations that were inappropriate or for offences that were not even criminal or warranting detention. The impact of that detention is in many ways immeasurable in terms of the psychological, physical and emotional harm that those children will have experienced and are still experiencing. The criminal justice system is often regarded as being overly punitive, but not when it comes to corrupt judges who were willing to trade children’s lives for financial benefit.

And what of the corporation that was willing to pay for those children? The culture of private prisons as business seems to be breeding corporations that see nothing wrong in finding alternative means of filling their facilities. In this case there has been no action in relation to the corporation. PACC's then owner, Bob Powell, has not been charged. The company is still operating and its spokesman denies that its current owner knew of the kickbacks.

Mayor Calls for Reform of Juvenile Justice System

December 23, 2010

The Epoch Times - With a recidivism rate for boys of 81 percent, the highest in the country, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the juvenile justice institutions “relics” this week and called for an overhaul of the system, which is costing city taxpayers approximately $62 million a year.

The mayor said that sending young offenders hundreds of miles away from their families is not working. He compared the system to a turnstile, which is both costly and doesn’t aid in keeping the public safe.

“The current system is not helping our kids, it isn’t helping taxpayers and is not helping public safety,” said the mayor.

Bloomberg has proposed a new plan that includes allocating more resources to local juvenile centers, which would allow kids to stay close to their families in order to help them reintegrate into the community once they exit the system.

The current institutions are costing approximately $270,000 per child per year, said the mayor, whereas community-based programs cost significantly less, approximately $17,000 per child per year. He also highlighted that many of the community based programs have shown strong rates of success.

Although the number of kids in state institutions has decreased by two thirds, those facilities remain fully staffed while being half-empty.

Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Linda Gibbs joined Bloomberg to a visit to Finger Lakes Residential Center on Tuesday. There were about 148 staff members for approximately 40 kids, she noted.

“We’re getting fiscally clobbered in the process. In a time when we have to lay off teachers and public services, we’re paying the state for unused beds and idle staff,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor is asking the governor to enact legislation to allow empty centers upstate to close faster, while transferring more resources toward New York City facilities across the five boroughs.

Apart from the high recidivism rate and the cost to the taxpayers, Bloomberg cited low quality of education within the current system as another major concern. According to the mayor, none of the upstate juvenile centers have accredited schools. He described their school facilities as little more than “rubber rooms.”

“If you don’t have an education, you can’t get a job. If you don’t have a job, you can’t have the dignity to be self sufficient; you can’t feed yourself, you get hungry, and you get back into a life that spirals down,” noted Bloomberg.

The mayor also said that upstate facilities have a history of “failing to protect the security of the juveniles in their care.”

In August 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a report to Gov. David Paterson, documenting findings from a series of 2008 investigations into four juvenile justice facilities, including the Lansing Residential Center, the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, the Tryon Residential Center, and the Tryon Girls Center.

The DOJ found that staff was quick to resort to a high degree of force, which the agency called disproportionate to the level of infractions. They also concluded that the implemented restraining techniques resulted in a large number of injuries to the youth.

“I have had a long-time concern about allegations of abuse in state facilities that could be monitored more easily if juveniles were closer to their families,” said Rev. Al Sharpton.

Sharpton stated in a press release that the ultimate goal should be to bring the kids back into a family and community environment rather than isolate them. Sending children more than five hours away to upstate facilities makes it very difficult for the families of the youth to reach out and bond with them, in order to help them in the reform process, he noted.

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