Kickin' it back

In "one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record," as the AP article put it, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking more than $2 million in kickbacks from juvenile detention centers for sending minors into their arms.

What's interesting about this is that it could result in the state overturning of hundreds or potentially thousands of cases that these two judges officiated because they can't be sure the verdict was delivered in good faith or simply for the cash.

It also casts doubt on Pa.'s policy of contracting with privately-run juvenile detention centers and paying them to take care of the detainees, usually either a fixed overall fee or funding per child per day. Making the juvenile detention centers into profit-motivated businesses has obvious problems - after all, if you're being paid for taking in more kids, you'd be trying to get your hands on as many of them as you could. I would think that that might be obvious, but then again it could just be me.