U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money 
I had a rather awkward conversation with my parents a while back about the prison-industrial complex. My parents are well-educated and politically aware, but they were still under the impression that the prison system is actually effective. When I mentioned the US’s ridiculously disproportionate statistics of incarceration, my mom actually suggested it was because our police are better at catching criminals *headdesk*reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.
[…]
The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention. The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house. So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.
According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.
“The two judges face up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement made with the state.”
They made millions of dollars by selling children (and driving them to suicide), and all they get is a handful of years? The US legal system is a joke and people who pretend we have the rule of law are the punchline.
Sometimes I have no response to this sort of thing other than WOW WHAT THE FUCK AMERICA
(Source: sarahlee310, via stfuconservatives)
