Mark Clavarella and Michael Conahan, judges from Luzerne County in Northeastern Pennsylvania admitted to making more than 2.5 million dollars by selling children into prison. For at least 4 years, the judges took money from 2 privately operated children's prisons in exchange for imprisoning children in the prisons. Many young children were imprisoned with PA Child Care and/or Western PA Child Care. For each child the private firms were paid a substantial fee by the state. The judges were given a substantial kickback. Most of the kids shouldn't have been imprisoned at all. The boys and girls, mostly minorities, were sold simply to make a buck for the judges! For themslves, the judges accepted plea deals which included prison time and they admitted to fraud and related charges. This is an example of why private prisons are so bad and why contracting with private firms to imprison people is so very bad. At the present time, there's no way of telling how many judges across the Commonwealth have given themselves bonuses by accepting money to put innocent children into private jails. There's also no way of knowing how many private prison companies are doing the same kind of thing. It's time the practice was stopped.