Biden's commutation of a sentence given to a Pennsylvania judge convicted of railroading children to prison in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks from the private prison's operator to himself and Judge Mark Ciaverella.

In a truly sinister scandal that came to be known by the nickname "Kids-for-Cash," Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan pled guilty to racketeering charges and was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. By some estimates, the scheme affected more than 2,500 juveniles. In many cases, the minors were provided no defense counsel, and the crooked judges creatively applied laws in order to lengthen sentences. In a case handled by Ciaverella, a 15-year-old girl who created a MySpace page to mock her school's assistant principal had a 90-second, no-lawyer trial, and was sentenced to three months in confinement.