Payout for victims of judges who took kickbacks to send children to US prisons

A prison window (Ben Birchall/PA)

Two former judges from the US state of Pennsylvania who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than 200 million US dollars to hundreds of people they victimised in one of the worst judicial scandals in US history.

US District Judge Christopher Conner awarded 106 million US dollars in compensatory damages and 100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”.