A bribe corrupts the heart, said the author of Ecclesiastes.9 For corruption of the heart, one need look no further than Judge Mark Ciavarella of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and the “kids for cash” scandal that regularly put mildly misbehaving juveniles in lock-up. The story began with tougher drug laws that greatly increased the number of prisoners in Pennsylvania in the 1980s, putting a strain on the state budget. Then someone came up with the bright idea of offloading the jails to the private sector. Privatization was the new big idea, so instead of being guests of the state, the inmates
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