Joe Biden had managed to grant a pardon more controversial than the one he gave to his son Hunter..
Democracy Now explains:
Biden announced nearly 1500 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.
Offenders guilty of sexual or violent offences were not eligible for this clemency. An exclusion should also have been made for judges convicted of conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice.
This kids for cash scandal was shocking, but should not have been surprising in a prison system designed to generate private profit.
I have tended to see things this way since reading Crime Control as Industry by Nils Christie.
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