Juvenile Justice Scandal in PA

Last night in class a student (thanks, Matt!) alerted me to this story out of Pennsylvania, in which two Luzerne County juvenile court judges allegedly were taking kickbacks for sentencing offenders to privately-owned juvenile detention facilities:

Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile offenders....

Prosecutors described a scheme in which Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the county-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care LLC to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was overly harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters’ constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before, and some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it. Many of the children didn’t have attorneys.

Wow. Those are some shocking allegations. Here I thought Blago's pay-to-play scheme was bad...and now we've got a potential pay-to-sentence scheme? Yikes. Speaking of which, does anyone have any thoughts about what might happen to the convictions/sentences issued by these judges if they are in fact found guilty of accepting kickbacks?