When former Luzerne County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas
judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted last month on racketeering and
bribery charges connected to the convictions of more than 2,500
juvenile offenders, it marked the latest chapter in one of the
nation’s most-sordid criminal justice scandals.
For seven years, Ciavarella and
his partner in crime, former presiding judge Michael Conahan,
helped funnel $1.3 million a year in taxpayer dollars to cronies
operating two private jails. They often helped fill the pockets of
the operators by tossing
alleged youth offenders — many of whom were first-time offenders
charged with misdemeanors such as spraying graffiti, writing prank
notes, and truancy — into those jails, often finding the kids
guilty in less than two minutes (and essentially denying the kids
the right to lawyers to boot). In exchange for Ciavarella and
Conahan’s beneficence, the jail operators kicked back more than
$2.6 million — including $997,600 just for shutting down Luzerne
County’s government-run child jail.
Only in 2009, after a decade of
complaints often ignored by Ciavarella and Conahan’s fellow judges
and Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, did federal investigators bring
down the entire “Cash for Kids” scheme. Since then, several hundred
of the guilty rulings handed down by Ciavarella have been
overturned while the cases themselves have been expunged. This,
unfortunately, has come far too late for many of the young men and
women who now must deal with the scars, physical and otherwise,
from Ciavarella’s wrongful convictions. One teen caught in
Ciavarella’s grasp
committed suicide less than a year after spending time in one
of the juvenile jails.
Journalists such as former
Wall Street Journal scribe Thomas Frank, syndicated
columnist
Leonard Pitts, and Reason Senior Editor Jacob
Sullum either simplistically conclude that Cash for Kids
epitomizes the consequences of privatizing prisons or argue that it
represents the over-criminalization of American life. None of this
is gets to the heart of the matter. The scandal is just the latest
and most extreme example of a system that is dysfunctional and
costly to kids and taxpayers alike.
Last year, the U.S. Department
of Justice shocked the nation when it revealed that one out of
every three kids held in 13 juvenile jails and prisons were
sexually abused by guards, other employees, or fellow inmates. This
included 37 percent of kids imprisoned at the curiously named
Backbone Mountain Youth Center, and Indiana’s Pendleton juvenile
prison, which has become nationally known thanks to the popular
MSNBC reality show Lockup. Nationally, 12 percent of all
juvenile prisoners reported molestation and other forms of sexual
abuse.
The juvenile court system in
Indianapolis came under scrutiny in 2006 after allegations surfaced
that nine employees at the juvenile jail were sexually abusing
youth offenders; this came after revelations of rampant
overcrowding. While prosecutors couldn’t sustain those charges in
court, the author of this piece revealed in a series of
editorials and columns that juveniles were often denied
attorneys and, in some cases, were being falsely convicted of
crimes. For example, one
16-year-old was convicted by one juvenile court magistrate for
allegedly molesting her three year-old son and photographing the
action; the conviction was overturned after appellate judges found
that the photo used to justify the conviction actually showed the
young woman kissing her child’s belly. (The judge who oversaw the
entire mess, Jim
Payne, now works under Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels as
head of the state’s child welfare agency.)
Meanwhile, Texas had to overhaul
its entire juvenile justice system in 2007 after it was revealed
that 4,700 convicted youths were kept in juvenile prisons or on
probation beyond their original sentence. The state also revealed
that 2,000 kids in the state’s juvenile prisons were allegedly
subject to abuse. And in Chicago, the infamous Cook County juvenile
jail came under watch after news that guards were abusing inmates;
the county government eventually turned the jail over to the
county’s judges.
Such rampant abuse was not what
progressive-era reformers had in mind when they began pushing for
the creation of juvenile courts at the turn of the 20th century.
Activists such as Hannah Kent Schoff, an early president of what
became National PTA, were outraged that children and teens were
landing in adult prisons — sometimes at the hands of parents
annoyed that their kids wouldn’t work in factories — for mischief
and essentially becoming apprentices to hardened felons. So they
carved out an alternative to the criminal justice system in which
judges would sort out mischievous kids from budding sociopaths,
then use probation and social workers to help youths get onto the
straight-and-narrow.
But such a system, along with
welfare policies that discouraged two-parent families, essentially
gave parents the license to abdicate their own responsibilities to
be good parents; so many dysfunctional parents turn to the juvenile
courts for help, overwhelming the system. America’s woeful public
schools also contribute to the problem Two decades of
often-nonsensical zero tolerance rules and the presence of police
officers in school corridors have resulted in more pranks, graffiti
incidents and schoolyard brawls landing in courthouses. The
overdiagnosis of students with learning disabilities also
contributes; 30 percent of incarcerated youth surveyed by the U.S.
Department of Justice were diagnosed as being special ed cases,
while a team led by University of Florida professor Joseph C.
Gagnon determined in a 2009 study that between 38 percent and 44
percent of juvenile inmates were taking special ed
classes.
Two-thirds of the 2.1 million
juvenile arrests made in 2008 were for misdemeanors such as
vandalism and so-called “status,” or age-based, offenses like
underage drinking and truancy. In Arizona, for example, the number
of juvenile court cases originating out of schools increased by 41
percent between 1995 and 2004, according to a study led by
University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor Michael Krezmien
released last year. A child pushing a snowball through a teacher’s
open car window is as likely to land before a juvenile court judge
as a member of the Crips caught in a street
fight.
Add to the mix the reality that
juvenile court judges not only run the courts, but often the
juvenile jails and probation departments, and suddenly, the system
becomes chaotic. State laws often allow the judges much wider
discretion in sentencing, with convicted youths often falling under
the watchful eye of the court until age 21 or long after they reach
adulthood. So a teen on probation can end up in jail because of
another act of mischief. With few checks and balances — including
defense attorneys, criminal procedure, and even law enforcement —
found in adult courts, juvenile courts can be ripe for abusive
judicial behavior. This is especially troubling because only three
states mandate that alleged youth offenders must have lawyers; in
many states, parents can even waive their child’s right to counsel
— even if they are the ones who brought charges in the first
place.
Juvenile justice systems escape
any easy reform. There are certainly kids who belong in juvi, but
far too many shouldn’t be in courtrooms. Ensuring that alleged
child offenders have lawyers at every step would at least help give
them due process; in fact, juvenile courts should adopt all the
legal aspects of the adult criminal justice system since the
penalties for juvenile conviction can sometimes be just as serious
as those faced by adults. More stringent scrutiny of juvenile
prisons, jails, and probation departments would also help. Even
better would be for schools and states to drop the zero tolerance
laws; this (along with overall school reform) would keep more kids
out of courts, jails, and prisons.
But the best solution starts at
home and in communities: Parents need to take better care of their
kids from birth. And communities can help by setting good examples
(including embracing marriage and the Golden Rule). Courts were
meant to preserve law and order, interpret laws and mediate
disputes that would otherwise be handled in less civilized ways.
They weren’t meant to solve the most deep-seeded social ills — and
they’ve proven it time and again at the expense of
kids.
