Happy Friday, y’all!
I’m currently pondering a news report about a judge who has been sentenced to 28 years in jail for his role in a scheme to sentence youth to for-profit detention centers in exchange for kickbacks.
Mark Ciavarella, a former Pennsylvania juvenile court judge, shipped thousands of kids to juvenile detention centers…at least one of the victims committed suicide.
The seriousness of this case warrants investigations into all for-profit detention centers…because there are way too many flies for just one pile of shit.
As I pondered this case and the harm inflicted upon thousands of youth by a corrupt criminal justice system, I had a nagging feeling that this hustle sounds a lot like another hustle I recently read about.
South Dakota passed a law that, among other heinous things, mandates that women seeking abortions receive counseling from crisis pregnancy centers. Lots of folks have written about the deceptive practices and overt religious nature of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).
CPCs are largely unregulated…
…and they are one of the most brilliant hustles I’ve ever seen.
Tis a hustle sure to make the former juvenile court judge drool - little to no oversight…millions in taxpayer funding with no discussion of measurable outcomes…and now a legislative test that, should it survive court challenges, will likely spread the legislative hustle of mandatory counseling through CPC to other states.
Pause…sip coffee…continue.
The former juvenile court judge who served up kids to for-profit detention centers had to work his vile hustle in the shadows.CPCs get legislators to do the hard work in the light of day.
But a hustle is a hustle is a hustle, my friends.
Oh and just look at all those flies!
Blink.
1 comment:
I used to teach at an institution for young people at-risk (a moniker I dislike, actually), many of whom had been in prison for violent offenses. They were minors. Their stories were hair-raising. Due to lack of proper legal representation and a frankly racist judicial system, they were often sent to detention centers for offenses that for my wealthier, suburbanite college students, would never have been considered worthy of jail. I had wealthier students--and white--get in trouble for the same kind of "crimes" and just get community service or a slap on the wrist. Certainly some of the offenses of my poorer students had been truly violent, but others were in the nature of fights and stuff that young people engage in everywhere. There is an economic reason why jails are filled with mostly black and brown people. The propensity for crime does not have anything to do with race, and much more to do with, as has been amply and reliably documented, cultural and economic reasons that ensure minority youth and adults receive a disproportionate amount of punishment in the legal system. Believe me, many profit from this. It is sickening, what we do to our poor children in this society, and how it is "okay" to consider so many of them as "dispensable". We not only shunt them aside, we allow businesses under the guise of organizations providing services (such as incarceration) to profit from their situation.
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