Kids For Cash Film Summary

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Recommended: Problems in our criminal justice system

"Kids for Cash" is a documentary about a scandal that happened in 2008. The outrage was about the bribes being given to judges in the judicial system at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Mark Ciavarella, who was elected and then re-elected for two 10-year terms as a juvenile court judge, and Michael Conahan, a senior judge, were suspected of accepting money from Robert Mericle, the builder of two private juvenile facilities, in order to make a profit out of the incarcerated teens. The judges would punish the teenagers that would be brought to their courts more harshly in order to increase the number of convicts in the juvenile facilities. According to CNN, "minors charged with nonviolent crimes were often given harsher sentences than what probation officers recommended, court documents say" (Chen, 2009).
The US incarcerates 5 times more children than any other nation. During his years as a Juvenile Court Judge, Ciavarella, alone, put more than 3,000 children in prison. The children he convicted were charged for minor crimes. For example, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as insignificant as trespassing in a vacant building, shoplifting DVDs from Wal-Mart, etc. (Robert May, Kids for Cash, 2014) The parents of the children involved were advised not to get lawyers …show more content…

One of the most known cases was that of Ed Kenzakoski. He was a high school student who was sentenced to 30 days in juvenile boot camp by judge Ciavarella. According to his mother, Sandy Fonzo, he started experimenting new things his senior year and things started getting a little bit out of control. It was then when his dad and some of his friends decided to give him a lesson. They planted drug paraphernalia so that Ed would be caught and given some community hours and show him he had so much to lose if he continued on this path. (May, Kids for Cash,

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