JPowdered Wig Society
By Thomas Madison
A 61-year old former Pennsylvania judge, Mark Ciavarella, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for accepting over one million dollars in bribes from a prison developer to incarcerate thousands of children and young adults. Ciavarella was convicted on 12 counts, which included money laundering, racketeering, mail fraud, and tax evasion, and has been ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.
Over 4,000 of Ciaverella’s convictions have been overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, citing egregious violations of his victims’ Constitutional rights. Many of the wrongly incarcerated victims were as young as ten years old.
Driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary, Ciavarella’s “kids for cash” program has proven that corruption is rampant within America’s prison system. Which country leads the rest of the world by a long shot in per capita incarceration? The United States.
