Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bill Ecenbarger’s new book, “Kids for Cash,” details the scandal of the same name that occurred from 2003-2008 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where ex-judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan accepted millions of dollars in kickbacks from two private, for-profit juvenile facilities in exchange for sending hundreds of children to those facilities (as well as other out-of-home placements) for often-minor offenses. Many of the children appeared in court without counsel.
In a review of “Kids for Cash” in The New York Times this week, writer Abbe Smith calls the book “a harrowing tale, lucidly told by a journalist with a good eye for detail” and counts Juvenile Law Center attorneys among the “heroes … who represented two of the detained children and petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to stop the widespread waiver of counsel.”
