Police abuses

[Xiahou]

Just to chime in with some local corruption news of my own- you know it's got to be good when it makes it to the UK press.

LIKE many other 15-year-old schoolgirls, Hillary Transue was not quite as respectful as she might have been towards the teachers at her Pennsylvania school. Yet she was a clever, computer-savvy pupil who had good grades and had never been in serious trouble.

One day, for a joke, she published a spoof article on the MySpace social networking website, mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre. The teacher complained and, to the astonishment of her family, Transue was charged with harassment and hauled into juvenile court.

That was where the family’s surprise turned to horror. After studying the case for two minutes, Judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced Transue to three months in juvenile detention. She was led out of the court in handcuffs.

Two years later it is Ciavarella’s turn to go to jail and Transue is among several hundred former inmates of local juvenile detention centres who are suing for compensation after one of America’s most sinister judicial scandals of recent times.

Basically, judges were sentencing children to juvenile detention in return for kickbacks from the detention center. This one seems like it keeps getting bigger and uglier by the day as the feds shine light on the dark underbelly of county government.