Kids for Cash Quotes

“We are a nation that sees imprisonment as the best means of controlling crime. And why should kids be any different? What candidate for judge, or any other political office, ever got votes by promising to work towards rehabilitating criminals? Retribution trumps rehabilitation every Election Day. Thus it is America, with only 5 percent of the world's population, is home to 25 percent of its prisoners.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“...Research revealed that perhaps the most important difference between adolescent and adult lawbreakers is that most youthful offenders will cease lawbreaking as part of the normal maturation process.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“A basic question emerges from the Luzerne County tragedy that cannot be addressed by any law or regulation: Were it not for the millions of dollars in bribes, how much of a public outcry would there have been against the actions of these two judges?”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“In fact a single judge in a county with less than 3 percent of the state's population was accounting for one in every five placements.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“In 2002, counsel was waived in 7.4 percent of all juvenile cases in Pennsylvania, but the rate in Luzerne County was more than seven times higher—54.8 percent.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“As a journalist for half a century, I have covered many 'blue ribbon' panels that were set up to study serious problems and then proceeded to ignore them.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme

“...one of the most dangerous places in the world is between a mother and her child.”
― William Ecenbarger, Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme