A former Pa. judge involved in the ‘Kids for Cash’ scandal is granted clemency by President Joe Biden
A former Pennsylvania judge who was convicted of sending children to jail while receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from the facility’s operator in the early 2000s was one of the nearly 1,500 people whose sentences were commuted Thursday by President Joe Biden.
Michael Conahan had been sentenced to 17½ years in federal prison after being convicted of racketeering conspiracy for his role in the so-called Kids for Cash scandal in Luzerne County. Conahan pulled funding from a county-owned juvenile detention center there and agreed to send juveniles to a for-profit facility in exchange for payments, a scheme that netted him and fellow jurist Mark Ciavarella nearly $3 million.
Conahan, who was convicted in 2011, had been serving his sentence in a Florida facility and was due to be released in 2026. But he was placed in home confinement in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Despite Conahan’s involvement in the scandal, news of his relief was welcomed by Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and cofounder of the Juvenile Law Center, an advocacy group that was among the first to raise concerns about the scheme.
