Pennsylvania railroad: juvenile court corruption.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings

IN 2004, responding to concerns about the unusually high rate and cost of juvenile incarceration in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, "I'm not in the business to determine whether placement rates are up or down. I'm in the business of trying to help these kids."

For a tidy profit, that is. In January, Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan, president judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas between 2002 and 2007, admitted receiving $2.6 million from the operators of two juvenile detention facilities and conspiring to hide the money from the Internal Revenue Service. Under their plea agreement, each will serve seven years in federal prison.

In 2000, federal prosecutors say, Ciavarella helped a local lawyer, identified by The Times Leader as Robert Powell, build a juvenile detention facility. Two years later, Conahan signed an agreement with Powell's company, PA Child Care, to house juvenile offenders; later that year, he shut down the county-operated juvenile detention facility. The two judges received nearly $1 million for their efforts, and the arrangement worked out so well that in 2005 Powell and his partner, Greg Zappala, opened a second detention center in western Pennsylvania. Prosecutors say Ciavarella and Conahan collected another $1.6 million from the jailers during the next few years.

Meanwhile...