And some people wonder why there is so much distrust in the criminal justice system.  Here’s a story about two judges in Pennsylvania who pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, entered plea agreements in federal court in Scranton admitting that they took payoffs from PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare, between 2003 and 2006.  Both judges are facing up to seven years in prison.

When someone is sent to a detention center, the company running the facility receives money from the county government to defray the cost of incarceration.  So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.  Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced to detention centers for minor offenses that would typically have been classified as misdemeanors, according to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S. courts.  But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offenses didn’t require one.  Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received excessively harsh detention sentences.  She said the center will sue the judges, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare for financial compensation for their victims.

“That judges would allow their greed to trump the rights of defendants is just obscene,” Levick said.  The judges attempted to hide their income from the scheme by creating false records and routing payments through intermediaries, prosecutors said.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court removed Ciavarella and Conahan from their duties after federal prosecutors filed charges on January 26, 2009.