Well, you gotta admire his entrepreneurial spirit…
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Kids in Luzerne County had a powerful incentive to stay out of the courtroom of Mark Ciavarella, a fearsome, zero-tolerance judge who tossed youths into juvenile detention even when their crimes didn’t warrant it.
Ciavarella ordered a 13-year-old boy to spend 48 terrifying days in a private jail for throwing a piece of steak at his mother’s boyfriend during an argument. An honor roll student who had never been in trouble before was sent to the same jail, PA Child Care, because she gave the middle finger to a police officer. A girl who accidentally set her house ablaze while playing with a lighter languished in PA Child Care for more than a month — forced to shower naked in front of male guards, she says, and prohibited from hugging her family during rare visits.
She was only 10 years old.
PA Child Care’s beds were filled with young offenders who didn’t belong there, prosecutors allege, because its owner was paying kickbacks to Ciavarella. On Monday, the disgraced former judge will stand trial in one of the biggest courtroom scandals in U.S. history — a $2.8 million bribery scheme known as “kids for cash.”
Say what you want about Judge Ciavarella’s ethics, but his business sense? That’s hard to criticize. In fact, this whole scheme was about as clear an illustration of unfettered, free market capitalism as you can get.
Privatize your prisons, and you create an economic incentive—indeed, imperative—to fill them, through legal or other means… just like the private bail bonds industry has generated a powerful lobby intent on crushing pretrial release programs and other reforms that threaten their margins.
Read your Adam Smith; profit is a powerful motivator. And its a motivator that virtually assures that whatever our safeguards, the more we privatize essential government services, the more private interests will profit at the expense of public.
Jails, not schools, for a nation of fools.
Anything that is a “necessary evil” should never be privatized. The criminal justice system, agencies that monitor the safety of our food and our workplaces, the military, and health care coverage costs should never be put in charge of people who intend to use those things to make money.
Private companies are great for making and selling bubble gum, cars, stereos, and lawn mowers. They suck at providing health insurance and prisons.
Wow. I’m not sure I could think of a long enough prison term for that guy. Numbers don’t go that high.
And, what Urgutha said.
The judge is an instrument of the state, not the free market. This seems to illustrate more about the monopoly on violence the state has compared to any market mechanism. Bribery only works when you have someone to bribe.
This is not the free market at work. This is an example of corruption in a society that is, thankfully, much more free from corruption than most of the world. The same corruption could happen in a non-capitalist economy, right? The solution to this problem is a functioning free press (more likely in a democratic and capitalist society) and a good judicial system (a bit of irony in this case), which is also more likely in a democratic and capitalist society.
I hope the steak was broiled, not braised.
@4: You said it better than I.
#4, #5, #7 If the jail had not been a private business there would not have been an offered bribe.
I remember this story from Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story”. I put off seeing it for awhile because I partially bought into the hype that he was a sensationalist liar, but that movie’s awesome.
I’d put that guy away for life and not feel bad about it…
While this is very much disturbing, the news is old and im pretty sure that both former judge Michael Conahan, and Mark Ciavarella Jr pled guilty two years ago.
@11: Nope, they tried to a couple of years ago but the judge didn’t think they were really “taking responsibility” for their actions, so now it’s back in the courts.
Frankly, this reminds me of the courts set up to deal with cases of alleged escaped slaves back in antebellum America. If a black man in the North was accused of being an escaped slave, a judge would be paid 40% less for ruling that he was a freeman than for ruling that he was indeed a fugitive slave. Sick.
@8- FTW.
@8 What do you mean? Warden Norton is always hoping to get a junior Dufresne assigned to his state correctional institution.
I hope & believe that Mark Ciavarella will have a nice big gaping goatse by the end of his sentence