Between 2002 and 2006, Pennsylvamia judges sent about 10% of kids appearing before them to detention centres. judge Mark Ciavarella however sent 25%. The difference was marked but the reason was not clear until recently when he - and another judge, Michael Conahan - were convicted of taking cash from the owners of the centres.
Keeping the jails full meant that the owners kept the tills ringing so having a 'friendly' judge clearly made sense - indeed it seems to have been worth their paying the judges over US$2.5m.
Even in a world where the expectation of corruption high places is pretty much the norm, this story still shocks.
It all seems to have come to light because of a particualrly absurd case in which a 15 year old girl was sentenced to three months without even having the chance to put her case against the charges of a heinous crime - that she wrote an unflattering comment about a teacher on her MySpace page!
Removing the judges from their posts - and putting them in their paymasters' facilities for over 7 years - doesn't of course fix the outstanding problem of many hundreds (maybe thousands) of convictions that now need to be reviewed. What's more, there are suggsteions that there may have been many more cases beyond just juveniles so this may be the tip of the iceberg.
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