Biden slammed for commuting sentence of notorious ‘Kids-for-Cash’ judge convicted of imprisoning juveniles for $2.1M kickbacks
By Victor Nava
Published Dec. 12, 2024
The corrupt former Pennsylvania judge convicted of funneling juveniles to for-profit detention facilities in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks had his lengthy prison sentence commuted Thursday by President Biden.
Former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, the jurist at the center of the so-called “Kids-for-Cash” scandal, was among 1,499 commutations the 82-year-old lame-duck president granted in the largest presidential act of clemency on a single day in modern history, according to the White House.
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Conahan, 72, pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for his role in the scheme and was sentenced to 17½ years in prison in 2011.
He was released to home confinement in Florida at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020.
At the time of Conahan’s sentencing, the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania described the judicial scandal as “the worst in Pennsylvania’s history.”
More than 2,500 children between 2003 and 2008 were potentially given disproportionate sentences by Conahan and Ciavarella in order to populate the private detention centers paying them the kickbacks, investigators believe.
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