Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

by Dominique DuBois Gilliard

The court determined that Ciavarella’s commitment to “zero tolerance” was not what drove his overzealous conviction rate. Ciavarella’s convictions were primarily driven by an illegal agreement with his friend Robert Powell, the co-owner of the two private juvenile detention centers that Ciavarella’s convictions populated. Ciavarella was convicted of racketeering, along with other charges, and sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison. Ciavarella, however, did not act alone. This was yet another example of institutional injustice and systemic corruption.3 Robert Powell was sentenced to eighteen months after confessing to paying kickbacks to Ciavarella and Ciavarella’s boss, Judge Michael Conahan. Conahan, who was also friends with Powell, pleaded guilty to racketeering and was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Robert Mericle, the developer of the prisons in question, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in prison.4 Ciavarella swept thousands of youth into the juvenile justice system over the course of this scandal. In 2009, “the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the adjudications of all youth who appeared before Ciavarella between 2003–2008, dismissed their cases with prejudice and ordered all of their records expunged.”5 The Juvenile Law Center’s relentless advocacy and investigative research was paramount in the overturning these unjust convictions. In the end, four thousand of Ciavarella’s convictions were nullified.6 The greed and corruption of an elected of...