The article above is from 2/29/09. A 2014 article[0] shows their guilty pleas were later rejected due to their behavior, and both given larger sentences.
> Both originally agreed to spend seven years in prison, but then Ciavarella talked exclusively with Newswatch 16.
> "I loved the juvenile court, I loved helping those kids. I would never do anything to hurt a child, that's just not what I do. That's not me. I was always there for those kids. I resent the fact that people think I did something improper. I didn't do anything improper when it came to the care of those kids," said Ciavarella in July of 2009.
> Days after that interview, a federal judge rejected the guilty pleas of Ciavarella and Conahan, saying their behavior didn't really accept guilt.
Other sources agree with the 28 year sentence. Here's one from 2013 regarding an appeal being denied, and as far as I can find it didn't go any higher.
Apparently at least one of them continued saying they were innocent after the plea deal (in which they admitted guilt), so a court threw out the plea and retried them in 2011, resulting in 17 and 28 year sentences instead of the plea of 7.25.
This was the one flaw in the otherwise excellent FBI and Pennsylvania Attorney General investigations.
They never should have allowed the number of jointly tried cases that they did. They used joint prosecution as a tactic, combining lesser hard-to-prove charges against one defendant with severe charges against another in the same trial, relying upon the strength of the evidence against one defendant to damn them both.
Regardless, their investigation was very beneficial in the long run. Low-level corruption used to be endemic in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, until the Federal government came to town. Following the "Kids for Cash" case, the area became the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry into official abuse of office.
By the time the dust settled, close to two dozen officials were criminally charged, including a state senator, a very wealthy commercial real estate developer, and two county commissioners.
This occurred a few miles away from where I grew up. My mother's former law partner is the President Judge of the county, and another partner at her firm was appointed to fill one of the vacancies left open on the county bench. Both were uninvolved, assisted with the Federal investigation, and had no knowledge of the scheme. They were cleared of all wrongdoing and continued in their judicial role.
It's still unbelievable to me. These judges and contractors were well-respected members of the community. Yet they committed perhaps one of the most heinous breaches of trust possible in a justice system: selling children into prison for personal profit.
I met these men. They did not start out "evil." However, in a relatively isolated Rust Belt region, the judges are some of the most powerful political figures in the county. The conspirators messages show the slow progression from neutrality into almost gleeful corruption, as they became intoxicated with the power of the bench.
Well, that's just corruption of the worst kind, but private prisons or no, I'm betting this judge would have found an alternative stream of dirty money if private prisons didn't exist.
I mean, look I agree with you that they need to be closed, but there are likely better examples of them just being worse on merit, without having to dive into bribery and whatnot.