Lawyers who helped convict him support Biden’s decision
In 2008, Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of scheming to collect kickbacks in exchange for keeping a privately-run detention center full, even when that meant sending kids there who clearly were not a threat to anyone.
Conahan accepted a plea deal in the Luzerne County Kids for Cash scandal, and was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in prison. Ciavarella (who was an unreasonable juvenile judge before he ever had a financial motive to do so) went to trial and was sentenced to 28 years.
Last week, President Joe Biden cut short the sentence of Conahan as part of a sweeping commutation action focused on 1,500 people who had already been on community confinement, and who were deemed to have successfully reintegrated into their communities.
The decision to include Conahan on the list drew sharp objections from people who had been incarcerated during the scandal, and their family members, as well as by public personalities ranging from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to Elon Musk.
“This was not only a black eye on the community, the kids-for-cash scandal, but it also affected families in really deep and profound and sad ways,” Shapiro said at a news conference last week. “Some children took their lives because of this. Families were torn apart. There was all kinds of mental health issues and anguish that came as a result of these corrupt judges, deciding they wanted to make a buck off a kid’s back.”
Youth Services Insider covered this scandal for years, and immediately wanted to know what Marsha Levick thought of the decision. Levick, who co-founded the Juvenile Law Center in 1975 and will retire next year, was onto the hijinks in Luzerne County before financial grift was involved, and Ciavarella was detaining and locking up youth for minor offenses after adjudicating them without a lawyer.
Levick said Juvenile Law Center supported President Biden’s actions because the organization believes in “a compassionate justice system that rejects an historically hyper-punitive approach to holding people accountable.” But she said she also hopes Conahan “has reflected on the harm he caused to thousands of kids as he accepts this clemency today.”
And, she said, “we would like to see the same kind of compassion and mercy extended to children nationwide who continue to suffer harm from our juvenile and criminal legal systems.”
