Hillary Transue

In the wake of the shootings at Columbine, a small town in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, elected a charismatic judge who was determined to  keep kids in line. Under his reign, over 3,000 children were taken from their families and imprisoned for years for crimes as petty as creating a fake MySpace page. When one parent question this harsh treatment, it was revealed that the judge had received millions of dollars in payments from the privately owned juvenile detention centers where the kids were incarcerated. Robert May tells the story in his documentary “Kids for Cash.” He’ll be joined by Hillary Transue, a formerly incarcerated youth, and Marsha Levick, Chief Counsel, Juvenile Law Center. "Kids for Cash" is playing in NYC at Village 7 and Empire 25.

Hundreds of children and teenagers were sentenced to juvenile detention centers by Judge Mark Ciavarella since 2003. That was when he and another judge began participating in a multim...