Luzerne County Pennsylvania

I’ve written here before about the “school to prison pipeline.” Goolgled that today and got 786,000 results, many about the efforts of the A.C.L.U. and the N.A.A.C.P. to decriminalize childhood.

Last week the Houston Chronicle-Lite ran an item off the AP wire about the Luzerne County Pennsylvania Juvenile Court system as shocking as anything that’s happened in Texas in recent years. Two Juvenile Court Judges pled guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud charges that will bring them each at least seven years in prison for sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks. Authorities are investigating other elected officials as well as Robert Powell, owner of PA Child Care LLC of Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, who says that he was a victim of extortion.

Philadelphia’s Juvenile Law Center began raising questions about the court with state authorities in 1999. Proceedings in the court were averaging less than two minutes each, and lawyers were telling families of the accused children not to hire them because they wouldn’t be allowed to speak anyways.

Now the state must decide how to deal with these thousands of tainted convictions ranging from assaults and drug dealing to one girl arrested for dissing the vice-principle on her MySpace page. All are entitled to new trials, but some are now too old to be tried in the juvenile system.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has appointed Berks County Judge Arthur Grim to grant relief as quickly as possible with two conditions:

Records of juveniles who wish to collect information and documents for use in pending civil lawsuits will be preserved and the expungements may be delayed, and the Luzerne County Probation Office must release copies of Juvenile Court daily case lists from Jan. 1st ’03 – May 31st ’08 to the County DA’s office and to attorneys for the Juvenile Law Center, the group that has advocated for the juveniles.

I’d be surprised if we don’t have similar scandals right here in Texas. We’re second to nobody when it comes to fear-mongering politicians capitalizing on crime victims and appealing to racism and xenophobia with a lock’em up and throw away the key rhetoric that’s a perennial winner with voters. Combine that with the Republican mantra of privatizing any government function that can be found in the yellow pages and you have a situation ripe for abuse.