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Friday 13 February 2009

Why prisons, maybe, sorta, just oughta NOT be privatized

Among the most appalling stories I have read recently, (gad, doncha just LOOOOOVE capitalism?)

I don't know why, I do not know anyone personally, so far as i know, who has been imprisoned, much less incarcerated unjustly.
But the idea of this has always haunted me (watching I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang on the Million Dollar Movie while babysitting as a fourteen year old?)

Anyway, I am exactly the kind of bleeding heart who would rather a hundred guilty persons be back on the street rather than one innocent person be deprived of his liberty ON MY BEHALF, (which is what it is. And on your behalf too, if you are a citizen of this nation.)

Weirdly, I was just discussing this, (a natural evolution of the rant about privtizing public parking.....?)

[J]udge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

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