President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to a corrupt former judge has sparked widespread outrage, including from members of his own party. Biden announced nearly 1,500 commutations and pardons last week in what the White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency from a president, but among those whose sentences were reduced is former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan — one of two judges in the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years for accepting nearly $3 million in kickbacks for sending 2,300 children, some as young as 8 years old, to for-profit prisons on false charges. His co-conspirator, former Judge Mark Ciavarella, remains in prison. We speak with filmmaker Robert May, director of the Kids for Cash documentary, and Sandy Fonzo, mother of Edward Kenzakoski, who was incarcerated as a teenager as part of the kickback scheme and later died by suicide. “It’s just reopening wounds that have never healed,” Fonzo says of the commutation. She describes her son as “strong” and “proud” before his time in detention, but says “he came out broken” and never fully recovered. “It stole his youth, his childhood.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: President Biden is facing fierce condemnation for granting clemency to former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan, one of two judges jailed in the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years for accepting nearly $3 million in kickbacks for sending 2,300 children, some as young as 8 years old, to for-profit prisons on false charges.
On Friday, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro criticized Biden’s decision.
GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO: I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania. 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. Some children took their lives because of this. Families were torn apart.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, Democracy Now! spoke to Washington Post columnist Heather Long, who had covered the “kids for cash” scandal as a reporter in Pennsylvania.
HEATHER LONG: This was a huge mistake by President Biden to grant clemency, to reduce the sentence for Michael Conahan, the former judge from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, who was one of the two judges involved in that really heinous “kids for cash” scandal. We’re talking about sending thousands of kids to for-profit detention facilities, many of whom were first-time offenders who probably should have had community service or some sort of slap on the wrist, and instead, they were sent to a detention facility for months, in some cases years. So many negative consequences happened because of that, that many of those young people ended up depressed, addicted, didn’t graduate high school. Some lost scholarships. It was just a chain event of tragedy.
And Michael Conahan willingly did this. He knew about it. He purposely blocked a county government facility being built, so that these for-profit centers could be built. Some of the cash kickbacks were delivered as cash in a shoe box or routed through a Florida condo that he and the other judge set up to funnel money. I mean, there was just so much that was knowingly done that was wrong here, and then an attempt to stymie any attempts to stop it or any attempts to prosecute it. So, it’s just really hard for anybody who lived through this in Pennsylvania — I got my start there as a journalist — to believe that President Biden could do this and, you know, would want to give this particular person, who gave no one a second chance, this kind of leniency.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Washington Post columnist Heather Long. Her new article is headlined “Biden gave ‘kids for cash’ judge clemency. That’s how broken this process is,” unquote.
The scandal was the focus of the 2013 documentary Kids for Cash, directed by Robert May, who will join us in a minute. This is the film’s trailer.
UNIDENTIFIED: She was a good kid. She was happy.
HILLARY TRANSUE: I was known for being the jokester.
SANDY FONZO: Eddie, he was always a fireball.
HILLARY TRANSUE: We were talking about how funny it would be if we made a fake MySpace page about my vice principal.
AMANDA LORAH: I was trying to stay out of trouble. That’s when everything started.
MARK CIAVARELLA: Whatever sins you have committed, you can’t go back and undo it.
TERRIE MORGAN-BESECKER: Ciavarella was a no-nonsense, zero-tolerance judge. He always jailed kids.
MARK CIAVARELLA: You are going to experience prison. I’ll be glad to put you there.
UNIDENTIFIED: The way Ciavarella ran the courtroom, you could have had F. Lee Bailey there, and the kids would have gone away.
MARSHA LEVICK: There’s a mechanism that takes over that keeps kids in that system.
HILLARY TRANSUE: No one listened, because we were kids.
UNIDENTIFIED: There was never any instance of guilt or innocence. They were locking him up.
MARSHA LEVICK: Really high number of kids appearing without counsel.
SANDY FONZO: We have no rights. He’s in their custody now.
UNIDENTIFIED: It is unbelievable. We’re talking about children.
MARK........© Truthout