Pennsylvania Judicial Corruption...What About Judges Jailing Parents for Cash?
An article caught my attention yesterday after I wrote a piece on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, coming out of Pennsylvania. I wanted to wait to see the poll results in the original article found at AOL News. (Source:AOL NEWS; Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash; Orig Article; Feb. 11, 2009) The explanation offered in the article by prosecutors for their taking of over $2.6 million in kickbacks"was corruption on the bench." By the way, the polling results as of 8:45am Est at the above source states that Overall, only 10% of over 9,000 participants have faith in the justice system, while 67% say they don't. The rest have "mixed feelings." Not good for "public confidence" in the judiciary.
"They sold their oaths of offices to the highest bidders," Deron Roberts, chief of the FBI's Scranton office, said at a news conference Monday. (Source:AOL NEWS; 2 Pa. Judges to Plead Guilty to Public Corruption; Orig. Article; Jan. 27, 2009)
This corruption case aside, which affected thousands of minors, brings into question the kickbacks that are received for child support enforcement and the federally subsidized family court system. For every action taken on a case in a family court involving establishing child support orders, establishing paternity orders, and associated enforcement "services" a kickback is received to the state and local offices that trickle right back to the judge making the decisions. What is worse about these kickbacks in the family court system, is that everyone knows that this is happening.
Each branch of government is responsible for managing their own budgets, however the judiciary is unique in that it knows that for every dollar they exhaust in performing services under a Title IV-D contract that they will in essence receive two more dollars back. Judges, their employees, and other participants of these contracts are getting steep kickbacks from the federal government, which isn't much different than what the Pennsylvania judges are guilty of.
Let's take this a step further, because Michigan courts make it even more obvious than other states by using a judicial employee as an intermediary to perform all contractual services. These contractual intermediaries are known as "Friends of Courts" which come to conclusions that in nearly every divorce, separation, and custody action that a child support order is necessary and they make it very difficult to opt-out of these welfare programs. Michigan riddles the obvious kickbacks with conflict of interest issues that are written right into a block of statutes known as the "Friend of the Court Act." These programs and services that judicial employees are getting kickbacks for are nearly all mandatory and all work out to the benefit of the judicial budgets. The morale of the story is that the more people that go through the ringer, the more money the federal government pays to the State and Local decision-makers.
A final point about these various programs is that if the state manages to fail to distribute money after a year, known as "undistributed child support" the state gets to absorb it into their operating budgets as "program income." The entire system is riddled with inconsistencies, kickbacks, and conflicts of interest. Simply put, the program lacks any real government oversight because all branches of government are contracting with each other to get away with it.
Feds Obstruct Intact Families
- Title IV-D of the Social Security Act creates an interest for the States to focus on financial gain from one parent over the other without encouraging joint cooperation for equal parenting.
- The current Title IV federal funding system encourages the States to focus programs on state revenue generation by increasing welfare rolls, increase child support orders, increasing removal of children from homes.
Additional Information About Title IV-D Can Be Found:
- Nationwide Child Support Enforcement Fails Needy Families
- Mounting Accountability Problems With Child Support Programs: Data Stolen
- Child Support Clerk Charged With Embezzlement: program needs oversight
- Lary Holland Explains How Federal Grants Obstruct Equal Parenting
- Nationwide Blueprint for Title IV-D Reform
- Title IV-D Overview - Original
