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Kids-for-cash judges ordered to pay more than $200M

Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups; one located in Allegheny Township known as Western PA Child Care. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of children would be sent to PA Child Care in Luzerne County and its sister facility, Western Pa. Child Care.

Western PA Child Care, the former 98-bed juvenile detention and treatment facility, closed in November of 2020. The facility saw a steep decrease in the amount of juvenile placements during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, owner Greg Zappala told the Butler Eagle in 2020.

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