This is a horrible story that should surprise no one. When you run prisons as profit making operations — a business only sleazy people would be involved with — this is what one should expect. At least the story has a good ending in that some of the creeps went to prison. This is who we have become in the United States. I hate it. Profit prisons should be illegal.
Inside the Shocking
Amy Goodman – Reader Supported News
Today a special on “kids for cash,” the shocking story of how thousands of children in Pennsylvania were jailed by two corrupt judges who received $2.6 million in kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities. We hear from two of the youth: Charlie Balasavage was sent to juvenile detention after his parents unknowingly bought him a stolen scooter; Hillary Transue was detained for creating a MySpace page mocking her assistant high school principal. They were both 14 years old and were sentenced by the same judge, Judge Mark Ciavarella, who is now in jail himself – serving a 28-year sentence. Balasavage and Transue are featured in the new documentary, “Kids for Cash,” by filmmaker Robert May, who also joins us. In addition, we speak to two mothers: Sandy Fonzo, whose son Ed Kenzakoski committed suicide after being imprisoned for years by Judge Ciavar! ella, and Hillary’s mother, Laurene Transue. Putting their stories into context of the larger scandal is attorney Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center. The story is still developing: In October, the private juvenile-detention companies in the scandal settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5 million.
Phi Beta Iota: There are more people of color in US prisons today, generally for recreational marijuana offences and other non-violent crimes, than were every enslaved by the South, North, and West at the peak of slavery in the USA. There is a robust slavery business in the USA for women especially, brought to do menial labor and work in textile and other sweat shops. Finally we have pedophelia as a booming business aided by one element of the Catholic Church with a blind eye turned by the FBI, which protects rather than procecutes the elites who consider pedophilia to be their “privilege.”
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