The case in question Former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella presided over many juvenile cases – 5,000 in the last five years – and was strangely harsh with sentencing. In one example, he sentenced a kid to nine months at a juvenile detention center for stealing change out of unlocked cars.
Now that’s just sketchy Ciavarella had a pretty corrupt reason for the harsh sentencing – he and another judge sent more kids to juvenile detention facilities so that they could get kickbacks to the tune of $2.6 million. The two judges recently got sentenced to 87 months in prson for fraud. See, that’s what they deserve.
Many lives ruinedCiavarella left a long trail of damage – of the children who faced him in court without counsel, 50% of them went to a juvenile detention center. “I was sort of shocked and taken aback,” she Hillary Transue, one of his victims. “I didn’t really understand what was going on.” source