Amy Goodman Interviews Two Juveniles Incarcerated by PA Child Care

This past week Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviewed two of the estimated 5,000 juveniles sent to jail by Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan in Pennsylvania. Since 2002, these judges "are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring that juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons operated by the companies Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care."

You can listen to the interview at Democracy Now or read the transcript here. Other coverage can be found here and here.

I found this part intriguing:

Amy Goodman: Jamie, how did going to jail for almost a year, after your fight with your friend -- how did that affect your life?

Jamie Quinn: It affected me dramatically. I mean, you know, you think it wouldn't, but it really has. I mean, I've lost friends over this. People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up, and in my personal opinion, I think it's because I was away and got locked up and was, I thought, getting, you know, punished for what I had did, which I don't think I should have.And I was just -- I'm still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places are just horrible. Everybody gets put in the same level, and it's just horrible. I'm still struggling. I'm graduating this year. And math is still not my favorite subject. I was like an A-B student before I went, and now I'm just struggling with Bs and Cs.

In an article for the Aspen Daily News, Goodman reports that:

According to The Sentencing Project, “the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.1 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails — a 500 percent increase over the past thirty years.” The Wall Street Journal reports that “[p]rison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.” For-profit prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) are positioned for increased profits. It is still not clear what impact the just-signed stimulus bill will have on the private prison industry (for example, the bill contains $800 million for prison construction, yet billions for school construction were cut out).