A judge who helped orchestrate one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S.history — a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks — was among the 1,500 people whose sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden this week.
Biden’s decision to commute the 17-year prison sentence of Michael Conahan angered many in northeastern Pennsylvania, from the governor to the families whose children were victimized by the disgraced former judge. Conahan had already served the vast majority of his sentence, which was handed down in 2011.
“I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said during an unrelated news conference in Scranton on Friday.
The scandal “affected families in really deep and profound and sad ways,” he added. Conahan “deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”
A message seeking comment was sent to an attorney who recently represented Conahan, the former president judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas.
In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Conahan and Judge Mark Ciavarella shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from a friend of Conahan’s who built and co-owned two for-profit lockups.
Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of children would fill the beds of the private lockups. The scandal prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 children.
Sandy Fonzo, whose son killed himself at age 23 after Ciavarella locked him up as a teen, called Conahan’s commutation an “injustice.”
“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Fonzo said in a statement provided to The Citizens’ Voice of Wilkes-Barre. “Conahan‘s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”
The Juvenile Law Center, which represented plaintiffs in a $200 million civil judgment against Conahan and Ciavarella, said in a statement that it “supported President Biden’s actions” but wants to see the “same kind of compassion and mercy” extended to juvenile defendants around the country.
Conahan was a powerful figure in northeastern Pennsylvania before his arrest, regularly meeting for breakfast with the reputed boss of an area Mafia family.
When he pleaded guilty in 2010, Conahan apologized to the youths he had hurt.
“The system is not corrupt,” Conahan said at the time. “I was corrupt.”
In 2020, Conahan was released to home confinement with six years left on his sentence as part of an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in federal prisons.
Ciavarella, who went to trial and was convicted of some of the charges, is serving a 28-year sentence.