Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

by William Ecenbarger

The shocking story of the judges who were found guilty in federal court of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to send thousands of kids to a for-profit juvenile detention facility in exchange for cash payments—and who were finally ordered to pay hundreds of millions in damages to the victims of their scheme From the Pulitzer Prize–winning Philadelphia Inquirer reporter William Ecenbarger comes the exposé of a shocking scandal that ruined thousands of young lives. As the Boston Globe wrote, “the story is thousands of children wrongfully sentenced to juvenile detention centers, many without legal representation and after cursory hearings, by two rogue judges in northern Pennsylvania who received millions of dollars in bribes from the private institutions’ owners.” The story has all the elements of a true-crime legal thriller—mafia connections, colorful characters, corruption—and was made into a documentary of the same title released in theaters in 2014. But the survivors of the harrowing ordeal have finally gotten some in August 2022, it was ordered that the disgraced judges must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims. When it was first released, Kids for Cash brought the story to national attention, where it has stayed ever since. As the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, this is the “worst stain on Pennsylvania, a state with more than its share of stains. . . . Ecenbarger offers a detail-packed, sickening account of the scandal and its impact. Anyone caring about courts, justice, or children should read it.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime, True Crime, History, Politics, Law, Social Science

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2012

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in a Little Free Library on one of my walks a while back, and snagged it. I remember this story being big news years ago, and was curious to know more. In my mind, the news about this broke right around the time that I moved to the area (Aug 2004) but that is just my brain associating two big events together. In reality, I moved to the area almost smack-dab in the middle of the scandal, which started in September 2001, and ended with Ciavarella and Conahan resigning and being charged in 2008/2009.

I bought a house here, my mom (who came at the same time) bought a house here. She got remarried to a local guy, but I brought my future husband with me. Both my husband and I have travelled a lot, and lived in multiple states, and on both coasts of the US. My job is remote, so technically I could work from anywhere, but I have come to love it here. (OK, maybe not the winters. She says as she looks out at her snow-covered yard and counts the number of months until spring. AGAIN.) I've been here now nearly 22 years, and consider this area home.

I give this history to add context to my perspective, and also to help clarify the oddness of reading this story. I don't have the deep history of the area - but I am aware of it, and reading about places I have been, local politicians and figures I recognize, but am still sort of "outsider" to, it's strange.

I served on jury duty in the very courthouse where Ciavarella was tried, and during my breaks, I walked the same walkway overlooking the rotunda he did (I'll disinfect my shoes now, of course). I have eaten many, many times at Circles On The Square, and love their themed sandwiches and specials. I know the Pittston industrial park where PA Child Care was built. I know the East End neighborhood where Ciavarella grew up, and though the Holy Saviour Church is closed for services now, it's still standing and iconic. I used to live a neighborhood over from that one, twice. Once to the north, and once to the west.

It's strange feeling so close to a story, but also completely oblivious to it. I heard about this on the news, but it didn't register, sad to say. I remember seeing Sandy Fonzo on the news, screaming in Ciavarella's face outside of the courthouse at his trial in 2011, but younger me didn't really understand why at the time. Now I do, and my heart breaks for her. She and her husband were among the parents that brought their own kid in front of Ciavarella in a misguided hope to "scare him straight" and get him back on track in school and beyond. They considered Ciavarella "tough but fair". The father planted drug paraphernalia in his truck, and called the police. Their son was arrested, advised he wouldn't need a lawyer, and pled guilty to a misdemeanor. His parents thought he'd get a lecture and probation. Instead, he was handcuffed, shackled, and shipped off to PA Child Care for a month, and then a military boot camp for 4 months. For something he didn't do. When he was released, he was placed on probation, but while on probation, he got into a fight, and knew he'd end up in front of Ciavarella again, so he fled the state. Then two years later, he was in a traffic accident, and back in front of Ciavarella again for that previous probation violation. He sent him to PA Child Care again, this time for 120 days, and ordered him to pay $5000 in fines... to pay for his own incarceration. At this point he was 19, but PA law at the time allowed juvenile courts to hold jurisdiction until the age of 21. Then at 20, he was in a fight and brutally beat another man, and was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to 3-6 years at the state prison. He was paroled, but was depressed and drinking, and committed suicide at 23 years old.

What a completely avoidable, and horrific series of events to happen. I can only imagine how his parents must blame themselves for their role, but ultimately, Ciavarella held the real power in the situation. He manipulated the situation to encourage Fonzo's son Edward to waive his right to an attorney. He could have looked at a first time "offense" and decided on leniency - a warning, home detainment, probation - but he steamrolled him. He snatched this kid out of his life, away from his parents and friends and school and routine, and institutionalized him. He broke this kid's trust in the system, in fairness, in justice, in his parents, even. He was depressed and angry and then it just kept getting worse.

I know that I didn't know this boy, or his family, and I'm basing my comments off of this book and my own empathy, so I feel a little strange writing about real people like this. But that's what this story is about - the traumas that Ciavarella (and to an extent Conahan) inflicted on real people in the very community he is a part of, and was claiming to protect.

His policy of zero tolerance was brutal and vindictive. He held these children to impossible standards, and expected adult level rational decision-making and critical thinking skills that he didn't even employ himself - as a child OR an adult. In my personal opinion, he loved the cruel power of it all. He loved that he could sit up on his high horse and claim moral superiority over CHILDREN, while denying them their Constitutional rights, their dignity, and their freedom, and hold their lives in his hands, while placing the blame for their situation squarely on their own shoulders for having made a mistake. I think he loved the cruelty he was able to show toward these kids, and the way that school administrators and teachers loved that they could just send their "problems" to him to get rid of them, and the teachers would sing his praises for it. The kickbacks were just a benefit.

It wasn't even that much money! $2.6 million dollars back in 2004 is about $4.5 million today. That's nothing to sneeze at, for sure. But that was split between Ciavarella and Conahan, and honestly, it feels like a remarkably cheap price tag for selling one's soul, and the lives and futures of a community's children.

And we're STILL paying the price for this. Ciavarella is still in prison. Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, which means that US taxpayers are funding his "retirement" in North Carolina, at a cost of around $29,000 a year, according to The Google. So over $800,000 to incarcerate him... That's a little less than his original "finder's fee" payment, and about half of what he took from the county in kickbacks. Which he had to repay. But still. It all hardly seems worth it to be so heartless, and for so little.

Conahan, who enabled and protected Ciavarella with his position as president judge, was sentenced to 17.5 years. Not in this book, but something I am aware of is that at the end of 2024, his sentence was commuted by Biden before he left office. I do not agree with that decision, and think that it speaks loudly of the kind of "protect our own" mentality, since Biden is from Scranton, PA (until age 10), which is just about 20 miles north of Wilkes-Barre where all of this occurred. I think, to be fair, that the impact on the children was not part of the record of the trial of either man, and so I am not sure if Biden really understood the full scope of the crimes when he considered the commutation. (At the time all of this was happening, Biden was a sitting Senator for Delaware where he resides, and then was Vice President during the trials, so I'm not sure how much he followed this story at the time.). I don't know why he did it, but I don't agree with it. Conahan wasn't as cruel, and was more behind the scenes than Ciavarella, but they both exploited the system they were supposed to uphold, and harmed children they were supposed to protect.

Anyway. I don't think I agree with the reviews that say that this book reads like a thriller, because it doesn't, but it is well-researched and written, and provides a lot of context and info to really paint the picture of the scandal and how it went on so long unchecked, and how it unraveled and eventually resulted in some measure of accountability.

The harm caused can never be undone though. One point that this book makes quite well is that there were situations where youths were CORRECTLY sentenced to placement, teens who committed violent offenses, etc, but those records were expunged along with all of the wrongly decided ones when it was discovered how blatantly and unapologetically Ciavarella denied rights to children during his cases. One line really spoke to me: "You can’t be just a little bit unethical. You’re either an ethical judge or you’re not.”

These men were not.

[Neil McGarry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read about a dreadful topic. This book reads like a crime thriller, and I'd call it fun if it weren't about a real-life scheme that involved two judges using their authority to railroad kids to a private detention facility in return for millions of dollars in kickbacks. I found myself in turns amazed at the judges' brazen audacity and infuriated at the indifference to suffering of the people who surrounded and sometimes abetted their crimes. Highly recommended.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a whim walking through the library. Since I grew up in NEPA I knew the story, but it was nice to have it all laid out in a cohesive manner after the fact as opposed to getting bits and pieces in the newspaper over the course of years. Definitely reaffirmed my decision to settle down elsewhere.

[C Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read...(especially if your from Luzerne County)

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://philadelphiareviewofbooks.com/...

Northeastern Pennsylvania does not immediately come to mind when one hears the words La Cosa Nostra, but the Bufalino Family, based in Pittston, a city of under 8,000 residents less than ten miles southwest of Scranton and 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, has a deep history operating in the region. From 1903 to 1905, Tomasso Petto, after fleeing prosecution in New York for the barrel murder of Benedetto Madonia, operated a “black hand” extortion racket in Pittston and the Wilkes-Barre area. When Giuseppe di Primo, Madonia’s brother-in-law, got out of prison, he tracked Petto down and stabbed him 62 times outside of his home in Wilkes-Barre.

Around the same time Petto fled to Pittston from New York, Rosario “Russell” Alberto Bufalino was born in Montedoro, a small town in Sicily where men have mined sulfur since the early 17th century. During prohibition and through World War II, Bufalino worked as a mechanic in a bottling factory run by New York mobster and bootlegger Joseph Barbara. In the 1940s, Bufalino became underboss of the Northeastern Pennsylvania mob, which, until Barbara took over in 1940, was led by a string of men from Montedoro for at least five decades. In fact, twenty years before Petto began operating in Pittston, a group of coal mine operators originally from Montedoro, led by the shadowy Stefano LaTorre and Santo Volpe, infiltrated the management and unions of the mining industry in the area, becoming the first Sicilian crime family to organize in the United States.

In 1957, a group of 50 made men met in Apalachin, New York, at Barbara’s 52-acre estate. The FBI infiltrated the meeting, setting up a road block at the entrance to Barbara’s driveway. Some of the mobsters fled into the woods nearby, but Bufalino and Barbara were apprehended. After the ensuing trial, Bufalino secured leadership of the Northeast Pennsylvania crime family and continued racketeering in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area and the Southern Tier of New York State. Consolidating ties in the coal mining, trucking and garment industries, as well as corrupt local law enforcement, Bufalino’s syndicate intimidated unionized workers and paid off “runaway,” non-unionized, sweatshops as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) pushed for organization.

Min Matheson, an early ILGWU organizer, wrote to the head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry in 1958 during a general strike of seamstresses. “Today, [a] group attacked our women picketers, injuring several of them and also viciously beat up a man, a passer-by, who attempted to intervene. The ILGWU considers this the beginning of Bufalino’s war on our Union, and of course, we will not allow it to succeed.” Min’s brother, also an ILGWU worker, had been stabbed to death with an ice pick ten years earlier while organizing in New York.

*

He had eight fingers and a wandering left eye and thin, inscrutable lips, but few details are known about the private life of Russell Bufalino, one of the last of the old school Mafioso who lived strictly by the code of omerta, a silent pact among La Cosa Nostra. His viciousness, however, comes out in a wiretap recording made by FBI informant Jack Napoli. Napoli wrote a bouncy check using Bufalino’s name, and when they next met, Bufalino told Napoli, “I’m going to kill you, motherfucker, and I’m going to do it myself.” Bufalino went to federal prison for four years, and at the age of 74 had a lifetime of extortion, racketeering and violence behind him, but much of his story is shrouded in mystery. There’s no tell all memoir ghost written from the safety of the witness protection program. However, Martin Scorcese’s long-gestating film The Irishman posits that Bufalino arranged Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975. Charles Brandt, whose book I Heard You Paint Houses is the basis for Scorcese’s project, said of Bufalino, “He was one of the most powerful mob bosses of his day, if not of all time.” And this guy lived in Pittston, Pennsylvania?

Not only did he live in Pittston, he was practically a pillar of the community. “Hundreds of people, including many local politicians, attended annual dinners held to coincide with Bufalino’s birthday sponsored by the local chapter of the Italian-American Civil Rights League” which Russell Bufalino ran, wrote Dave Janoski of the Citizens’ Voice. Eight miles away from Pittston, in Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square, stands a blue and gold marker commemorating the legislative career of Daniel Flood. Flood, a powerful congressman who represented the area for thirty years in Washington, resigned in 1980 after being caught taking campaign bribes. He was named prominently in Bufalino’s FBI file. But Flood, a former Shakespearean actor and vaudevillian who waxed the two prongs of his mustache to needlepoints and dressed with uncommon sartorial flair, remains a hero to his community almost twenty years after his death. When the king of pork funnels that pork your way, you tend not to hold the little things, like bribery and corruption, against him. While Bufalino’s legacy is more complicated, voices of praise still resound. “There will never be another Russell (Bufalino) or Louie. They did so much for our communities,” D. Foglietta, a reader of the Citizens’ Voice, commented.

The influence of the Bufalino Family waned as the coal mining and garment industries collapsed in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the last quarter of the 20th century and through simple attrition, as the old bosses died and failed to recruit new men. But remnants of the organization still have access to political power in the region. In 1978, Joan Weiner, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission said, “You can’t turn right or left in the Poconos without bumping into gangsters.” Louis DeNaples, a Bufalino associate, established and operated Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, one of the first casinos to open in Pennsylvania, until 2008 when the state forced him to hand over the casino license to his family after he perjured himself denying ties to Bufalino. DeNaples pled guilty to defrauding the City of Scranton out of more than half a million dollars nearly thirty years before the state then granted him the license for Mount Airy. Russell Bufalino’s old driver and confidante, William “Billy” D’Elia, who maintained contact with Bufalino throughout the end of his life locked up in federal prison, facilitated ties with local officials in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties into the first decade of the 21st century.

For years, Billy D’Elia routinely met with Michael Conahan, a Luzerne County judge, for early morning breakfasts at a Perkins restaurant in Wilkes-Barre. When D’Elia was convicted in 2008 for money laundering and witness intimidation, his association with Conahan led investigators to uncover a shocking racketeering scheme perpetrated by Conahan and the Luzerne County Juvenile Court judge, Mark Ciavarella. Like the garment workers on Min Matheson’s picket lines, Conahan and Ciavarella’s innocent victims served as pawns in the profitmaking of organized criminals.

In his recent book Kids For Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.8 Million Kickback Scheme, William Ecenbarger, a former Inquirer reporter, deftly renders the fears of the children in Mark Ciavarella’s courtroom and then outlines the historical corruption in Northeastern Pennsylvania that brought them there. In Ecenbarger’s narrative, Conahan and Ciavarella’s greed and insensitivity to those they chose to exploit is not so much an anomaly, but instead par for the course in a region where local politics have been entwined with organized crime for the better part of a century. The cronyism, particularly in the Luzerne County Juvenile Court system is remarkable; Ciavarella was connected through the kickbacks with Conahan, with the district attorney’s office, with the juvenile psychologist, with the contractor and facilitator of the new juvenile detention center. The crimes were so blatant and open that everyone who passed through Ciavarella’s courtroom without screaming “foul,” implicated him or herself in the judge’s crimes.

Mark Ciavarella, in his megalomania and disregard for the fate of the children he exploited, acted like a Dickensian villain, a leech on the spirit of youth, a disgusting scoundrel and pure evil, if anyone deserves the charge. The scheme, which involved the complicity of Conahan who was Ciavarella’s boss and two other men – a local contractor and the proprietor of a private for-profit juvenile detention center called PA Child Care located in Pittston – relied upon a fresh supply of children adjudicated delinquent by Ciavarella in his closed courtroom. The kickbacks came via finder’s fees paid by the contractor and proprietor, and the money laundering necessary to cover up this fraud was what eventually caught up with Conahan and Ciavarella. But the real tragedy here was the countless children whose lives were disrupted or destroyed by the greed of officials who the public trusted with their welfare.

Ecenbarger’s list of kids who Ciavarella treated like chattel in his courtroom mounts and mounts through Kids For Cash and takes on a harrowing, hellish tone much like the descriptions of murder scenes in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. There’s Charlie, who at fifteen, went to PA Child Care for six weeks and then spent another three months in a boot camp for accepting a gift of a secondhand motorcycle from his mother which was later disputed by the seller. There’s sixteen-year-old Lisa, who, at a meeting of the literary club she belonged to, wrote a silly note about shooting up the school. Ciavarella sent her to PA Child Care for two weeks, and years later this lone blemish on her record delayed her Peace Corps application by sixteen months. There’s Angelia, a fourteen-year-old who took the rap for graffiti crimes she could not have committed. Ciavarella sent her to PA Child Care without her seizure medication “as an example to deter others.” Each of these children, and countless others, were shackled and chained in front of their parents and removed to the custody of PA Child Care, whose proprietor Robert Powell overcharged the government and delayed the psychological evaluations of new admitees to increase detention terms. Many of the defendants never spoke in their own defense in court. Ciavarella, against legal court procedure, often based his judgments on a cursory reading of the police investigation’s notes.

Ecenbarger creates an unbearable tension between Ciavarella’s indifference – he often determined the harshness of his sentencing by whether Penn State won or lost the previous weekend – and the plight of the children under his purview, but neglects the importance of Conahan’s association with Billy D’Elia in bringing the kickback and money laundering scheme to the attention of federal prosecutors. Though Conahan and Ciaveralla were cited many times for unorthodox court procedures – particularly an unprecedentedly high incidence of juveniles forgoing legal representation – they could not be exposed, or even intimidated by anyone inside the corrupt legal and political system of Luzerne County and the state of Pennsylvania at large. Instead, it took two intelligent young girls and their resourceful families to practice their legal rights and advocate for those without such resources. Though the state expunged the criminal records of every juvenile adjudicated under Ciavarella, neither Ciavarella nor Conahan would ever be held legally responsible for miscarriages of justice in their courts. Like the victims of the legitimate juvenile delinquents who Ciavarella processed through PA Child Care, the innocent children he unduly punished were not served by the system; they were mere byproducts to be forgotten and forcibly erased from public memory.

Judge Edward Kosik, on the other hand, in rejecting Ciavarella and Conahan’s plea bargain with federal prosecutors, fought for real justice and restitution in what could have been a cursory trial in which the judges lost some of their money and spent a few months in jail. But, in the end, the trial was not about the children whose lives were ruined by Ciavarella and PA Child Care and the system that facilitated their greed. Instead, the feds prosecuted the two judges only for the money they defrauded from the public in the kickback scheme. The sentencing – twenty to thirty years in maximum security prisons, for such old men practically a life sentence – is the only consolation for the families of the kids in the wrapped up in the scheme, since there would be no public legal airing of the charges pertaining to the courtroom conduct of Ciavarella and his associates. All those adults in the room when Judge Ciavarella cavalierly tricked the parents of defendants into signing away their child’s rights to an attorney and said nothing about it, would never be reprimanded for their inaction. Like Ciavarella’s favorite collegiate football program, Penn State, the Luzerne County court system permitted child abuse on a wide and unimaginable scale, and the appearance of propriety and officialdom led to a code of silence as insidious as the omerta of the Bufalino Family.

Will this exploitative culture rise again? There’s little reason to believe it has been thwarted at all. Penn State fans complain about harsh penalties from the NCAA, and never mention the heart of the matter – Sandusky’s victims. Their Friday night reveries are more important than the lives their most prized institution has destroyed. Though the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice made important recommendations after the scandal broke and some of those recommendations became law, the ground in Pennsylvania and the rest of the United States is still fertile for corruption in the juvenile justice system, where lazy attorneys and connected judges in closed courtrooms act with impunity in the interest of their own comfort, regardless of the needs of the children they should serve.

[Papaphilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme made me scream loudly. William Ecenbarger wrote a masterpiece of justice gone wrong. A dirty deal to send children to a private jail a judge had a stake in shows how badly justice may be distorted. What comes across is not only the chutzpah this judge shown, but how a very powerful man was able to brow beat subordinates in looking the other way. Worse yet, William Ecenbarger shows how the Justice system works and how the system can lock up an individual and not provide justice to the damaged. Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme shows the sheer audacity of the scheme, the damage the children suffer from the judge, and how a corrupt system in North East Pennsylvania allowed it to flourish to the point that is beyond belief. This is a painful book that is a must read.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've change my review of this book to the highly coveted 5 stars. Was it the best of classic crime and prison literature like "Papillon" or "Les Misérables?" No. Was it the best of true crime pulp? Nope. This book carves its own territory as a serious investigative volume by respected journalist, William Ecenbarger who simultaneously takes on an engaging novelist approach to tell his story.

If the belief in total corruption within the U.S.Justice System is foreign to you, this book is a "must read." Hats off to Ecenbarger: I'm sure many victims eyes were opened as we're my own. This is the story of two corrupt judges trading the productive lives of our citizenry to enrich themselves with Florida Condos, yachts, and international travel. Imagine a kid torn from her family and tossed in jail for a non violent petty crime. Imagine boxes of cash arriving at the judges home in compensation for keeping the jail full. Imagine everyone in the system knowing what was going on and turning a blind eye.

Kids for Cash is a disheartening tale which in unvarnished fashion exposes the United States Justice system as being rotten to the core. As disheartening and depressing as it is, it's a necessary step to us admitting we have a serious problem in America. Like alcoholics, awareness and admission we have a problem is the first step to solving it.

I pray that judges Civerella and Conahan never see the light of day. I hope they are forced to share cells with hardened criminals. I hope they witness and experience the rapes, killings and other dastardly unspeakable disgusting acts that go on in the institutions which they used to satisfy their own hypocritical insatiable greed. Die in hell: alone.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please read this book. Here is a truly riveting, eye opening story that will make your blood boil. It is about corruption run amuck in our juvenile justice system. This scheme went on from 2007 to 2009 in Luzerene County, PA with trials and sentencing of the corrupt judges not occurring until 2010 and 2011. Juvenile court judge Mark Ciavarela was sentenced to 28 years in prison, ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for back taxes and restitution. He was charged with money laundering, failure to report income, failure to pay taxes, and taking kickbacks. The kickbacks were from privately owned, for-profit juvenile detention facilities that he helped establish. In other words he made money by sending kids to jail. At sentencing Ciaverela apologized to his family, friends and coworkers, completely ignoring his young victims and their families. There were so many individual cases of abuse of the legal system the magnitude overwhelmed the prosecution. They felt the jury would be overwhelmed trying to understand and navigate a system that even when it works well is hard to understand. The trial judge ended up overturning these cases and expunging the records of thousands of children harmed by this miscarriage of justice. Unfortunately, some truly violent offenders received the same treatment. I could write a book venting about this case, injustice in general, and it's ramifications in our society.

[Patrick Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember hearings on this at work although I didn't attend them, being busy with performing my job in another building. When I saw the book I decided to see what all the stir was about and it left me thinking, "what the hell?".

This is the story of a corrupt county judicial system in Pennsylvania and how judges got kick backs and made millions from private owners of incarceration centers. The more I read the more angry I became. Where was everyone who is a good person? Where were the good judges who could have stopped this? One finally stood up but after way too long in my opinion. Many teenagers had their lives ruined, parents left confused and broke with no one to turn too. Thankfully a group from across the state finally began pummeling said corrupt judges with an investigation.

The book was very insightful into how things can go so wrong so quickly when no one is watching or nobody is brave enough to speak out. How the few can control the many. How a few corrupt people in power can ruin the lives of so many. This book is a bomb going off and should be read by every employee of Courts of Common Pleas throughout Pennsylvania, by every judge and politician and all law enforcement. This situation was a tragedy.

The book itself was well written, followed the course of events for multiple defendants of "mischief" and how they were punished like life long criminals.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to Read But Important to Do So.

A county in PA where Wilkes- Barre is located opens a for profit juvenile detention center. It is a county with a high elderly population and low child rates. It is known for corruption in government and people have often paid for government jobs including teaching. Once a huge coal town, the population is used to deferring to authorities in employment, government and the church. The area used to have a juvenile detention center that was a horror and closed in 1965. Parents have been known to scare naughty kids into behaving by calling the cops. But two judges, or especially, begins to remand kids for small harmless offenses to this detention center. Others working on the county justice system passively agree and cooperate. Kids and parents agree to not hire attorneys and get their kid to p!dad guilty thinking the judge will like it better and be nice. It doesn't happen. As years go by, one mother manages to call legal defense team for juvenile justice organization for help .

[Wanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was appalled, even though I had followed this story of two corrupt judges and the amoral county which was their fiefdom. To think that kids can be sent away to juvy jail and denied their rights today all for profit is disgusting. While these guys bought Florida condos, took expensive vacations, lives a jet set life style, they destroyed kids who were acting in developmentally appropriate ways. To be sure their net did catch a few no goodnicks, but they scarred far more children than they "helped" and all to fund their lavish way of life.
My main problem with this book is that, while it is a worthwhile read, it is pretty repetitive and I kept wondering where the editor was. Numerous places could have been cut for redundancy.
This seems to be rampant in publishing these days. I think copy editors are either sloppy, or more likely so over-worked that they give their books a cursory spell check and then send it to press. Sigh.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a despicable scumbag of a judge who abused his power and profited greatly off of incarcerating children for minor infractions. Infuriating and well researched.

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I saw the title at first I thought the book was about children trafficking. Never in the wildest dreams I had anticipated that this was discovery of two judges who abused their power. Their greed to sell kids freedom and rights to enrich their lives left me with horrible and sad feelings. It left me with thoughts not to ever look away from something that it does not feel good and stand up to those with power to help those who have no voice. It's quick read..

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do I feel about this book? As a mother and grandmother I was appalled when this happened in the county where I lived and after reading this I am even more appalled. It was well written and gave more details than I knew about. I'm still upset all these years later.

[Miss Murder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kids for Cash is a scandal that sounds like it occurred in the 1800s, not in recent history. The draconian processes that were implemented in Luzerne County's courthouses are something to truly be ashamed of. Everyone should be familiar with this absolute miscarriage of justice that occurred for years.
This book serves as a thorough documentary for this scandal, as well as Pennsylvania's long history of corruption even in its highest offices. Ecenbarger not only discusses the scandal, but gives detailed accounts of many, many children that became victims to these greedy judges. He does a masterful job at getting to the heart of the scandal - that is, the children themselves.
I rated it 3 out of 5 stars because I was bored with a lot of the history and judicial processes discussed. I really enjoyed the anecdotes about the victims and the indictment of the judges, but otherwise it was a lot of the same topic stretched out for quite a few chapters. Despite this, I truly enjoyed learning about a scandal that I otherwise would not have known about.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rage-inducing book. Good, but watching the shitbag judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciaravella screw up young lives for their own profit ... jeez, they're evil. Using their clout in their Pennsylvania county they shut down the juvie detention center, then contracted with a for-profit one. They got big, big kickbacks; Ciaravella made sure a steady stream of kids spent time at the center to make up for it. Yell at a teacher? Spend a week waiting for a psych eval. Throw a punch at another student? Spend a week. Flip a passing police car the bird? You get the picture.
What's equally horrifying is that it's not just the money. Ciaravella would sentence kids performing these petty acts to months in other facilities he didn't have a stake in because he was a bullying, zero-tolerance shit. And he did so in blatant violation of court procedure, fairness, everything. And much of the system — legal, school, police — stood by and let him do it. Or approved.
I have to remind myself that the people who fought against this prove we are not all a hive of scum and villainy.

[Erik Sapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have worked in the criminal justice system for almost 7 years - most of that time as a defense attorney, but now as a prosecutor. I've had juvenile clients sent to "kiddie prison" and worked with them after they were released. I've worked out deals to keep clients at local, rather than state, detention centers.

This book was painful to read. So many people knew what was happening, and yet nothing was done. But in the interest of fairness, the book explains the mindset of the region (with longstanding tradition of corruption) and how that fed into the idea that corruption is just part of doing business. It also explains why so many people stood back and did nothing.

The book starts slow as it lays out the history of northeastern PA. Eventually the book gets to the scandal and everything takes off. By the time I was about 75% of the way through, I did not want to put the book down.

[Anne S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the story of a judge in Wilkes-Barre PA who got kickbacks for sending kids to a private juvenile hall. Most of the children who were sent away did minor crimes that in other areas would have resulted in a fine and community service and probably would not have re-offended. Not so with these judges, they sent the kids away and most of them didn't even have representation.

I spent my teen years in NEPA and while I was a "good kid" and didn't get into trouble, I felt sorry for the kids who got into big trouble for minor infractions. The sad part is that no one was looking out for the children who got sent away and there were many people in various positions of authority who could have helped the situation far sooner than they did.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Luzerne County, the legal system and the back drop that led to all these abuses.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luzerne County is filled with mafia, nepotism, and crooked people. This explains how Judge Civarelli and Conahan are in cahoots with Powell who establishes a Pa. Child Care facility for children who are in trouble for various crimes. A kickback is paid out ( a million bucks) and Civarelli continues to fill the center with kids so he gets a kickback. The judge doesn’t let the kids have legal representation and hears cases in 90 seconds often, putting kids away in shackles and leg locks, not being able to represent their side of the story. There were more kids in that county than anywhere else in the state that did not have a lawyer represent them and go directly to a punishment camp or center rather than try to rehabilitate or probate them.Despicable court treatment of children.

[Stefania Shaffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was research reading and un-put-down-able. I found it gruesome, realistic, and recommend it for any parent who might be unintentionally traveling down the path with a juvenile delinquent in tow.

[Eva D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent coverage of appalling violations of the rights of juveniles in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

[Sabrina Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about a horrible topic. Well written and informative.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is dark and deep, and these scandals still happen today. They're just slightly repackaged and better protected. There's a documentary on it as well.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Corruption, corruption, corruption!

[Mary Ellen]

Disturbing - must read

[Jan Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow***hard to believe the corruption***and the price thousands of kids
Paid.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Certainly not a literary masterpiece, but an fairly engaging true crime story of corruption of the juvenile court system of Luzerne County Pennsylvania.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well that was infuriating.

[Me · Rating 5 out of 5]

hell ain't hot enough

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this is a great book, although quite frustrating and anger-provoking. It may be both more interesting and more frustrating for a resident of Pennsylvania.

To briefly describe the "Kids for Cash" story, Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan worked together in a Luzerne county scheme that used a privately-owned and "for-profit" child prison for juveniles. I'm not worried about sugar-coating words. Basically, because people want to protect the privacy of minors, the judges abused their power to both keep the wraps on this scheme where Ciavarella would keep the PA Child Care facility booked by ensuring a steady flow of victims. In other words, kids would make a dumb mistake at school and then get locked up in the facilities that were paying off Ciavarella and Conahan.

This book brings forth a lot of questions that are out there regarding civil liberties for both juveniles and adults. Privately owned for-profit prisons have a built-in incentive to keep people locked up. I think the writer could have left the shackling of juveniles question alone or provided more details about why this is so much more terrible than the already terrible crimes that took place. This is a travesty. I think, considering how frustrating one can become with the material, it's a good and important read.