Synopsis – Shackled
From Goodreads – Here is the explosive story of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a judicial justice miscarriage that sent more than 2,500 children and teens to a for-profit detention center while two judges lined their pockets with cash, as told by Candy J. Cooper, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
In the early 2000s, Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania were known as no-nonsense judges. Juveniles who showed up in their courtrooms faced harsh words and even harsher sentencing. In the post-Columbine era, many people believed that was just what the county needed to ensure its children and teens stayed on the straight and narrow path. But as more and more children faced shocking sentences for seemingly benign crimes, and a newly built for-profit detention center filled up further and further, a sinister pattern of abuses and bribery emerged. Through extensive research and original reporting leading into contemporary times, award-winning journalist Candy J. Cooper tells the story of a scandal that the Juvenile Law Center calls “one of the largest and most serious violations of children’s rights in the history of the American legal system.”
My Review
Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and a Town that Looked Away by Candy J. Cooper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 stars
Shackled was infuriating to read. It was hard to imagine that people could be so evil as to lock up kids unnecessarily for their own profit. Sad how many people turned a blind eye to what was clearly damaging thousands of children.
The book was well written and well researched but sometimes a bit dry. It is a book geared towards a high school audience but I found myself wondering whether that age group would be drawn to the book the way it was written.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the organization and sometimes the chapters seem to not be as related to each other as I would have liked. One chapter in particular, about the coal mines, I found only very loosely related to the story.
I think this book would have been stronger if there had been more focus on the children affected – Hearing the realities of their stories. This book did expose me to something I knew nothing about and has led me to want to do some more research and possibly watch the documentary that is referenced in the book.
This book is a 2024 Cybils Awards nominee in the category of High School nonfiction.
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