This as the paper tells you its screwed-up parents and religious cultists (they lied again, can you believe it) that are the threats to kids.
Now that's not to say that all parents are models of perfection; however, upon further investigation it appears that STATES are ALWAYS WORSE!
"Pa. youths jailed for cash?; 2 judges accused of scam to profit from sentencing" by Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press | February 12, 2009
But, but, but... we LUUUVVV our kids here in AmeriKa!!!
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - .... Two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.
"I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.
Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.
No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is ongoing. The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.
Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note, and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned after probation officers recommended against it.
Many appeared without lawyers, despite the US Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.
Constitution? What's that?
Oh, right, that archaic document that our laws are supposed to be based on!
Yeah, no one follows that no more. According to George W. Bush, it's just a god-damned piece of paper.
The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud today in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.
That's it? Only SEVEN YEARS for DESTROYING a KIDS CHILDHOOD?
Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County's juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, "I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame." Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.
Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case. Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day....
Something about PRISONS for PROFIT bothers me; don't "hotels" need "customers?"
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Of course, that's just a couple of hicks from the sticks of Pennsylvania, right?
"Juvenile detention law often ignored; Some states mix youths and adults" by Mead Gruver, Associated Press | February 9, 2009
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - When Erica Olivares ran away from home at age 16, the penalty was not a stern lecture. It was a month in Laramie County jail. Soon, under the tutelage of adult criminals, she was addicted to drugs.
"Methamphetamine - I'd never even heard about that. And I heard about that in there," said Olivares, now 26. Legally, she should never have been in position to learn about it. Runaways are not supposed to be put in jail, let alone meet adult lawbreakers on the inside, under a 34-year-old federal law called the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.
Yet year after year, some states disregard key parts of the law with little consequence, an Associated Press examination has found. Those states included Wyoming, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Washington in 2006, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The federal law provides funds for compliance, and money can be withheld for failure to comply, just as millions in federal highway funds can be lost by states not setting a drinking age of 21.
That's what others call federal EXTORTION and BLACKMAIL, but....
But the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act provides far less grant money - from $600,000 to about $7.5 million annually per state. This is less than the cost of building juvenile lockups and hiring guards trained to work with juveniles. States feel less public pressure to comply, juvenile advocates say.
The Department of Justice, which administers the act, has a policy of not naming publicly the noncompliant states and not disclosing how those states have run afoul of the law. As a result, many youths become victims, advocates say.
But the GOVERNMENT wants to PROTECT YOU and YOURS from all the THREATS out there!! Can you SEE the LIES, readers?
News alert: This government DOESN'T GIVE a SHIT about YOU or YOUR CHILDREN!!! Otherwise the damn FDA wouldn't sanction all their noxious potions and pills.
"Kids' lives are literally at stake," said Liz Ryan, executive director of the Campaign for Youth Justice, a Washington-based group that lobbies to keep youths out of jail. "They can be harmed in adult jail. They can be harmed in juvenile correctional facilities."
.... It was only after a six-month, back-and-forth process under FOIA that the AP obtained records of states' compliance.Oh, AP had to FIGHT FOR 'EM, huh?
The Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention said it doesn't routinely name noncompliant states because it doesn't want to embarrass them.
Oh, it doesn't want to EMBARRASS the STATES!!! Yeah, TO HELL with the KIDS!!!!!!!
--more--"
I'll tell you thank Gawd I'm from LIBERAL, COMPASSIONATE Massachusetts!!
Our state isn't like the rest of you sickes!!! Us liber-Als up here care about our kids!
"Mass. court voids DYS custody based on 'dangerousness'; Justices' ruling to free 12 held" by Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | February 11, 2009
The highest court in Massachusetts struck down a law yesterday that allows the state to keep juvenile offenders who are slated to be released at 18 in custody for three more years if they are believed to be dangerous.
The Supreme Judicial Court's ruling that the law is unconstitutional will result in the release of a dozen juvenile offenders whom state officials had kept incarcerated after their 18th birthday.
Ummm, that feigned air of superiority I was feeling a few spaces above? Forget it!
One of those was among a group of young offenders who had challenged the law. The high court wrote that the law fails to define dangerousness, gives "unbridled discretion" to the Department of Youth Services, and violates the due-process rights of offenders.
"The language contains no indication of the nature and degree of dangerousness that would justify continued commitment and offers the department no guidance on how to make such a determination," wrote Justice Judith Cowin.
Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the ruling means "some dangerous young people, those who the DYS have determined continue to pose a real danger to the community despite being under DYS supervision . . . are going to be at large."
And terrorists will be roaming the streets if we close Gitmo!
Don't these state liars ever stop with the fear-mongering extremes?
Yup, BE AFRAID of the YOUTH, folks ... all 12 of 'em!!!!
There are 12 individuals between ages 18 and 21 who are currently in DYS custody because of civil commitments ordered under the law that has now been ruled unconstitutional, said Jennifer Kritz, a spokeswoman for DYS.
She said that the agency will not automatically free the 12 youths, but that their lawyers are expected to seek court orders requiring their release. Kritz said the DYS files about 20 civil petitions a year seeking to hold a youth until he or she is 21, based on dangerousness.
Yesterday's high court ruling infuriated Elizabeth Murphy, whose daughter, Crystal, then 15, was attacked in Salem nine years ago by a 17-year-old boy who slit her throat and left her for dead. The girl survived. Her attacker, Christopher Carlton, was sentenced to a juvenile detention facility, then released when he turned 21.
"It makes me sick to my stomach, and it makes me fear for people who are victims of these juvenile offenders," Murphy said. She contends that DYS is in the best position to know whether someone in its custody remains a danger and should be held for several more years.
"If during his time in DYS lockup he acts out . . . and acts in a way that is dangerous . . . I think they absolutely have a right to make that determination," Murphy said.
I don't know anything about that case (and the paper really doesn't fill you in); however, I'm not willing to hand offer unlimited power to some state agency -- particularly with kids.
But lawyers for the three juveniles who successfully challenged the law argued that their clients were not dangerous. The lawyers said the youths were notified just one day before they turned 18 that the state had concluded they were a danger and was moving to have a judge commit them for another three years under a law that was vague.
"You can't deprive people of liberty based on some undefined term of dangerousness," said Barbara Kaban, who is deputy director of the Children's Law Center of Massachusetts and represents one of the juveniles.
Unless they are a "Mulsim terrorist," right?
The lawyers, citing privacy rights, would not disclose what crimes landed the youths in DYS custody. But Kaban said, "These kids were not the most dangerous kids in the Commonwealth. None of them were charged with murder or rape or anything like that.
"These were kids who were delinquent, who had gotten in trouble, were arrested, and processed in the court system."
There is your problem right there! How can an immoral and corrupt state pass judgment on kids?
An earlier version of the law, which has been on the books since 1948 and was last revised in 1996, required that a determination of physical dangerousness be based on "the person's mental or physical deficiency, disorder, or abnormality."
But in 1990, the Legislature eliminated that wording from the law, giving youth services officials more discretion to determine dangerousness....
Translation: If the state claims it, then it is so.
But they are only there to PROTECT YOUR KIDS, right?
************
Kritz said DYS conducts a psychological evaluation and an assessment of the juvenile offender's history and relies on an evaluation from an independent forensic psychologist before determining if a teen is dangerous and requires longer incarceration.
And wait until you see what "dangerous" is:
The SJC pointed out that in a report finding one of the juveniles dangerous, the state cited his tendency to defy authority and described him as defiant, and "too upbeat and positive, given his current circumstances."
Oh, so ANY TEEN is a DANGER, aren't they? And SOME ADULTS, too!!!!!!!
DYS described another juvenile as disrespectful and curt, and said he did not display much humor, Cowin wrote.
Wouldn't he be "too upbeat and postive" then?
The STATE is just LOOKING FOR an EXCUSE to KEEP YOUR KIDS LOCKED UP, Massachusetts!!!!
Erica Cushna, a Springfield lawyer who represents one of the juveniles, said the dangerousness petitions have been difficult to defend because "when you go into court, it's so amorphous."
Yesterday's ruling does not apply to juvenile offenders who, because of the severity of their crimes, were sentenced to state custody until age 21, nor to juveniles who were tried as adults and sentenced to prison terms.Oh, so the kids in this system are CLASSIFIED this way for a REASON, huh?
If the crimes were that bad (for the dozen of them) then they would have been TRIED DIFFERENTLY, right?
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Also see: They Died in Each Others Arms
So when the state should have been there they were not, 'eh?
Of course, the cops are just there to protect you and yours (unless they are union).
Yeah, I guess the Boston's finest have better things to do:
"Earlier this month, police wrapped up a 30-day sting involving plainclothes officers mimicking tourists and other pedestrians. Once they were panhandled, they essentially became victims guaranteed to show up for a trial"
Update:
Once you get framed up in the, 'er, I mean caught up in the system, kids, it is hard to get out:
"A search for vindication; After he served 34 years in prison, James Haley's murder conviction was overturned. But questions remain" by Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | February 13, 2009
James Haley's 34 years behind bars ended with little fanfare and no publicity in January 2008, when a state judge quietly overturned his 1972 murder conviction and set him free.
The judge found that two Boston police detectives had withheld critical evidence at trial that may have helped Haley prove his innocence, and prosecutors have decided not to retry him for the decades-old slaying. Now, the 62-year-old Haley is looking for compensation for his years of hard time. On Wednesday, he filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the detectives, who have long since died, alleging wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and other violations.
Isn't it nice that taxpayers have to pay for tyranny's "mistakes?"
"I'm not a murderer," Haley, a slender man with wire-rimmed glasses, said yesterday as he sat in his lawyer's Boston office, talking about his wasted years. "More than anything in my life right now, other than proving once and for all I didn't kill David [Myers], I just want peace of mind, quietness in my life."
How do you truly repay a man for time?
But prosecutors say the dismissal of Haley's conviction and the decision not to retry him do not amount to an exoneration. A witness who helped put him in prison insists that he is guilty.
"I think he should be happy that he's on the street," said Haley's former sister-in-law, Gloria Custis, who was the key witness at his trial. "He should have just stayed out there and left things alone, because he knows that he's not innocent."
*******************
A package containing 60 documents came from the Boston Police Department in response to [Haley's] public records request for his criminal case file.
It contained police interviews that had never been turned over to the defense, indicating that the day after Myers's slaying, Brenda Haley and Custis told Boston police detectives Joseph Kelley and John B. Harrington, that they had last seen him a month before the killing....
In an interview yesterday, Custis said she saw Haley kill her boyfriend, so she doesn't understand why his conviction was overturned. She said she saw Haley the day before Myers was killed and attributed the discrepancies in the police report to confusion over the way police asked questions....
If you want to try and figure it all out, go here
I haven't a clue as to what really happened; however, I do know that the AmeriKan "Justice" System is heavily-weighted towards state interests. I mean, when they exonerate murderers what else are you supposed to believe? Ask Tommy Chong about our legal system.
I'm sorry, but AUTHORITIES LIE and LOOT!!!
What's the solution?
LESS GOVERNMENT the BETTER and LESS CENTRALIZATION, MORE LOCALIZATION!!!!
MORE LIBERTY and LESS TYRANNY!!!!!
STOP LYING and LOOTING and LEAVE OUR FAMILIES ALONE!!!!!!
