Maybe it’s unseemly for me to be pleased when someone is sentenced to 28 years in prison, which for a guy who’s 61 is effectively a life sentence.

But maybe not too unseemly when it’s Mark Ciavarella, Jr. 

In case the name doesn’t strike a bell, Ciavarella is the juvenile court judge who sold children into prison for kickbacks.  The numbers range from 6500 to 4000, far more harmed than by any predator.  A judge can do that, though not alone.  But each one was a child.  And each child lost a part of his or her life that can never be given back. 

Ciavarella didn’t deny that he took money from the guys running the juvey jail to which he sent thousands of children over, well, anything, but that he was paid on a per kid basis, which somehow made him a lesser scum.  At sentence, he made a  statement to the court in which thought it appropriate to lecture his victims

To all the juveniles who appeared before me, I would also apologize to them and ask that they forgive me for being a hypocrite by not practicing what I preached. I would hope that they would learn from my mistakes and realize that everything we do in life has consequences and that there are dire consequences when we make decisions we know are wrong.

No doubt child after child is deeply touched by these words. But Ciavarella hadn’t lost his arrogance.  He was once a judge, after all, and demanded that he be treated with respect.  For that reason, he had special words for the epithet that would forever taint his name, the “cash for kids” judge.

Those three words made me the personification of evil. They made me the Antichrist and the devil. Those words caused untold hurt and agony for me and my family. They made me toxic and caused a public uproar, the likes of which this community has never seen.

Wrong again.  “Those three words” did make him the personification of evil.  What he did to thousand of children made him the personification of evil.  He didn’t even have the gut to use the word “children” as he sought their forgiveness.  He called them juveniles, the sanitized legalistic way of dehumanizing the people he harmed. 

In an age where the length of a sentence is more often calculated in lifetimes than months or years, and both public and politicians never seem to tire of the words “life without parole” unless it’s a serious crime, a sentence of 28 years may not seem particularly severe.  Make no mistake, a decade is a long time in prison.  A couple of decades is much longer, as time in prison doesn’t flow evenly as if does otherwise, but seems to spiral out of control after the first ten years, dragging out day after tedious day.  When we get beyond the first 20 years of a sentence, time seems to stop and days, weeks, months stand still.  A sentence of 28 years is a very long time.

Then again, so too is a sentence of 100 years, or life, or whatever variation soothes the public’s fevered brow.

On the other hand, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed the convictions of about 4000 children who were entrusted to Ciavarella’s judicial care.  Loose math means that for every child he harmed, Ciavarella was sentenced to 2.5 days in prison.

When it’s put that way, it hardly seems like much of a sentence at all. 

Of course, this isn’t the proper metric for calculating a sentence.  There’s no direct correlation between the number of people harmed and the number of days of punishment.  And yet, when we are talking about the lives of children, it’s hard not to think about each and every child whose life was irretrievably altered by the greed of this man.  And when we think of the weapon he used to harm each and every one of these children, the power of a judge, the disgust is palpable.

Do other judges who might be inclined to think they can make a bundle selling children into imprisonment need to know that Mark Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in prison?  It’s unlikely, not because judges are inherently above doing wrong, but because none will see themselves in him.  Even Ciavarella can’t seem to grasp the magnitude of his crimes, still in denial that he wasn’t entitled to use children as pawned.  He was a judge. His word was law. 

Is the sentence imposed on Ciavarella the proper one?  I hesitate to say, as it’s a harsh sentence, and yet I can’t quite let go of the fact that for every child whose life was harmed, he is only paying 2.5 days.  Children’s lives are invaluable, and yet the price Ciavarella will pay per child is so very cheap.