Today a Pennsylvania jury found former juvenile court judge Mark Ciavarella guilty of 12 counts of corruption. If you haven’t been following this “Kids for Cash” horror story, the facts briefly are that Ciavarella took millions in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile detention center to convict and imprison thousands of children at taxpayer expense, most for extraordinarily minor infractions. (For details, see the Juvenile Law Center’s “Luzerne County ‘Kids for Cash’ Juvenile Court Scandal” page.)

Along with Ciavarella, the owner and the developer of the for-profit detention center pled guilty to corruption charges. But it seems to me that a lot of unindicted co-conspirators are running around free out there. The falsely convicted children didn’t turn themselves in. A cop arrested them, or in some cases a parent, school official, or other adult complained about them. The children’s offenses were so trivial in some cases that I have to question whether these complainants didn’t also receive kickbacks.

For example, apparently in one case a child who was playing with a cigarette lighter started a fire in her bedroom. She did hard time. Who filed the complaint? A fireman, a fire chief, a parent or guardian? In another case, while seated at a restaurant table a child threw a piece of steak at his mother’s boyfriend. He did hard time. Who filed the complaint? The restaurant? The boyfriend? The mother?

The case illustrates much of what is wrong with America’s juvenile justice system:

• Judges have unlimited discretion to convict and sentence juveniles.
• There are no juries in juvenile court.
• There are no prosecutors or grand juries in the juvenile justice system; the police alone have the right to detain and charge children.
• There is no appeals court in the juvenile justice system.

The only issue the Ciavarella horror doesn’t illustrate is that prosecutors can choose to prosecute a juvenile as an adult, no matter how young the child is.

Ciavarella is also a poster-child for my belief that the current system of electing judges doesn’t work. Few communities are small enough for the voters to know the names that appear on judicial election ballots.