LIKE many other 15-year-old schoolgirls, Hillary Transue was not quite as respectful as she might have been towards the teachers at her Pennsylvania school. Yet she was a clever, computer-savvy pupil who had good grades and had never been in serious trouble.

One day, for a joke, she published a spoof article on the MySpace social networking website, mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre. The teacher complained and, to the astonishment of her family, Transue was charged with harassment and hauled into juvenile court.

That was where the family’s surprise turned to horror. After studying the case for two minutes, Judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced Transue to three months in juvenile detention. She was led out of the court in handcuffs.

Two years later it is Ciavarella’s turn to go to jail and Transue is among several hundred former inmates of local juvenile detention centres who are suing for compensation after one of America’s most sinister judicial scandals of recent times.

The extraordinary case of the Pennsylvania judges who were paid bribes by private prison operators for every child they sent to jail has astounded America and shamed its judiciary, just as the US Supreme Court is considering another possibly landmark case involving alleged judicial corruption.

Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, a fellow judge from Luzerne county in northeastern Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty last month to pocketing more than $2.6m (£1.8m) in kickbacks from the operators of two privately run juvenile detention centres.

Both men face more than seven years in jail for their roles in a bizarre kids-for-cash scheme that flourished despite local newspaper investigations and complaints by families that children were being denied access to lawyers.

Prosecutors alleged that Conahan secured lucrative contracts for private jails which were paid by the state according to the numbers of inmates they housed. Ciavarella ensured that the jails were filled with a steady stream of juvenile offenders.

Lawyers for the detention centres involved have claimed that the scheme was concocted by the judges who forced the owners to pay up or possibly lose their contracts.

Between 2002 and 2006 Ciavarella is thought to have jailed a quarter of the defendants who appeared in his court, compared with an average for other judges of one in 10. In many cases he first persuaded the parents to waive their rights to legal representation on the grounds that the process would be cheaper and quicker.

Among the judge’s victims was Jamie Quinn, a 14-year-old girl who got into a fight witha friend and ended up slapping her. Her punishment: nine months in juvenile detention. Chad Uca was 15 when he pushed a boy at school, causing him to cut his head on a locker. Uca got three months. Another child was jailed for shoplifting a $4 jar of nutmeg. All were first-time offenders.

Publicity over Transue’s case helped to spur a federal investigation and the judges were eventually charged with conspiracy and tax fraud. Ciavarella, 58, acknowledged to the court that he had “disgraced my judgeship”.

The case has come at an awkward moment for the Supreme Court, which heard legal arguments last week concerning a West Virginia judge who stood for election with money provided by a local coal baron, then promptly ruled in the businessman’s favour in a multi-million-dollar dispute. Judges are elected, not appointed, in at least 39 US states.

The West Virginia case has also attracted national attention, not least because it closely mirrors the plot of The Appeal, a bestselling novel by John Grisham. Having lost a $50m lawsuit filed by a rival coal-mining concern, Don Blankenship, chief executive of the AT Massey Coal Company, spent $3m on the election campaign of Brent Benjamin, who duly became West Virginia’s new chief justice.

When the jury’s $50m award went to appeal, Benjamin cast the deciding vote to overturn the judgment against Massey. The judge denied that his relationship with Blankenship had played any part in his decision.

The Supreme Court is now deciding whether an elected judge should preside over cases involving one of his or her campaign contributors.

Critics argue that public confidence in judicial impartiality is likely to suffer if judges rule on cases involving people who have given them money. The Pennsylvania case has proved an alarming reminder of the threat of judicial travesty.

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